College of Business Administration

GROUP MEMBERS:

Kristen Morris
Laura Davisson
Crystal Kalish

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

Overview:

WomanHaven is a shelter for women and children that are victims of domestic violence. It is operated by the Center for Family Solutions of Imperial Valley and is located in El Centro, California. The center offers a variety of services such as a thrift store for the victims, anger management training for the spouses, mentor programs for the children, and prevention programs.

Our Goal:

Our group’s goal was to gather donations from a community yard sale as well as from our workplaces and families to donate to the WomanHaven thrift store. Our group also wanted to transport the donations to El Centro which meant that we needed a moving company to donate a truck.

Ethical and Social Reasons:

Utilitarianism- An ethical theory that holds that an action is right if it produces, or tends to produce, the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people.

Our project follows this principle because gathering unused or un-sellable items from our friends, family and community will benefit both the giving and receiving parties.

Ethic of Care- Asks us to recognize and take seriously the moral worth of relationships, particularly those characterized by caring.

As a group of women participating in a project to benefit other women we are practicing the ethic of care.

Process:

Dr. Shaver, a teacher at SDSU gave Kristen the idea of WomenHaven and it just so happened that Kristen’s community yard sale was coming up. Crystal created a flyer to distribute at the community yard sale as well as a different flyer to send around at work and Laura made all of the copies. Kristen contacted the realtor that was in charge of the community yard sale to make sure that it was okay for our group to solicit the neighbors help with our endeavor. Kristen was also in charge of meeting with her contact at SDSU to find out what kind of donations were needed and how to get tax receipts to the people who made donations. That weekend Kristen and Laura passed out the flyers, collected, sorted, and stored the masses of donations that were received. On the twenty-seventh of September Crystal was given the task of finding a company to donate a moving truck. She called twenty-one different companies and finally got a maybe from Crews Moving and was told to call back the next week. The next week Pat from Crews Moving told Crystal that he would donate not only a truck to pick-up and transport all of the donations to El Centro, but that he would also provide a driver that would load and unload everything. The day before our scheduled pickup Kristen and Laura filled up their trucks with the donations that were being stored at Laura’s condo and took them to Kristen’s parents’ house where everything else was being stored at and picked up at the next morning. On moving day Crystal and Laura bought donuts for the truck driver and cookies for Pat the owner of the moving company as cheap thank you gifts. The group met at Kristen’s parents’ house early Saturday morning and watched as the mover loaded everything up and went on his way to El Centro. Later that day Kristen contacted the WomenHaven thrift store to make sure that everything arrived safely and was told with excitement that that they were so thrilled with all of the donations.

Assessment

Overall our project was very successful; we were able to help as many people as possible in the most cost effective way. We were able to not only help Kristen’s neighbors get rid of a bunch of stuff that they couldn’t sell, but we were also able to donate it to women and children in need.