College of Business Administration

GROUP MEMBERS:

Leah Cohen
Hana Cushu
Laura Neubert
Katy Shunk
Matt Welch
Brent Wischnack

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

The social change project that our group chose to do, was to raise awareness for breast cancer through participating in the American Cancer Society’s Making Strides against Breast Cancer walk, which took place in Balboa Park on Sunday, October 17. In addition, we also volunteered at the registration booth helping to register participants and collect donations, and worked to raise a greater awareness of this disease and the fight to prevent it.

Our group consisted of six members, and was initiated by Hana, who posted the idea on the class website, and asking for anyone interested to contact her. This project was very important to her because this disease has personally affected her life; however the rest of our group realized what an enormous risk breast cancer poses for so many people, so we were very interested in helping to bring attention to this important cause.

Our project was mainly focused on participating in the 4.5 mile walk; however we wanted to get more deeply involved. We contacted the San Diego branch of the American Cancer Society (ACS) and spoke directly with those involved in organizing the walk to see how we could help. They informed us that they were greatly in need of volunteers to assist them at the registration booth on the day of the event, so we all agreed to take part in this as well. In order to get word out about our involvement in this project, we created a page on the American Cancer Society website. Naming ourselves “Team SDSU”, we posted our team picture and wrote a few sentences about our goal. The website provided an excellent way for us to send out personalized emails to our friends and family members explaining the project and why it is important, as well as provide an easy way to leave donations. We had decided early on that our main objective to be creating awareness not collecting money, but we also realized that a donation in any amount would be beneficial to the cause, so as a group we set a small collection goal of $500.00. To the surprise of the entire group, by the day of the walk we had not only met, but exceeded our goal by $50.

We felt strongly that there is not enough attention given to breast cancer so in an effort to raise awareness in SDSU students; we decided to set up an information table on campus. We wanted to be visible by large number of students and faculty members, so we positioned our table near the walkway behind Adams Humanities from 9am-2pm on Tuesday October 12th and Wednesday October 13th, the week prior to the walk. Our contact at the ACS provided us with brochures, bookmarks, nutrition guides and forms to register for the walk. We purchased pink ribbon and safety pins in order to make the trademark ‘pink ribbons’ to wear, for anyone who stopped by the booth and wanted display their support around campus. In addition, we also had an email sign up sheet for those who wanted further information on the walk, or other breast cancer issue. We also put out a collection jar and asked everyone who stopped by the table to donate any amount they could, even change. For the two days we spent on campus, we raised $105.00. The table was very well received by all that stopped by. Many people donated, others asked questions and expressed interest in the walk, and many others said they were already participating through their sports teams, religious organizations and fraternities and sororities.

The 4.5 mile non-competitive walk was held in the pouring rain on Sunday, October 17th, and both began and ended in Balboa Park. Our group arrived at 6:30 am to volunteer in the registration tent. We each had our own set of paperwork and were responsible for registering participants and collecting cash donations. We had consistent lines of people until the official beginning of the walk at 8:30am. At that point, we left our posts and joined the thousands of others who were “Making Strides against Breast Cancer”. The walk officially ended at 12pm; however we were finished by about 10:30am. There was an incredible sense of enthusiasm and accomplishment in the air at the finish line, especially when it was announced over the loudspeaker that the event had already raised over $500,000 that day, and that was before all the donations were counted.

Our group felt that our project was successful. It touched on quite a few ethical theories such as utilitarianism, social contract theory and ethic of care. Each person taking place in that walk was helping the greater good by showing support and raising money to contribute to the research and treatment of this terrible disease. Breast cancer is a disease that will most likely touch every single person in some way or another, as it already has for two of our group members. October is already known as the official Breast Cancer Awareness month and the American Cancer Society puts on this walk and other events each year, however our group helped to educate and raise awareness in ourselves by doing research and teaming up with the ACS, our friends and family from whom we asked for donations, and our fellow SDSU students by holding a booth and having an article published in the Daily Aztec. If we created enough awareness that even one less woman gets breast cancer, then our project was successful and our efforts were worthwhile.

For all the group members, participating in this event not only established a new awareness in this disease, but it created a sense of pride in all of us. It may have at first started out being “just a project” for a class, but it is now a cause that all of us have a new found interest in, and will continue to volunteer, donate and promote awareness to help those around us whom we care about.