College of Business Administration

GROUP MEMBERS:

Haas
Moock
Nielsen

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

Domestic violence has become a serious problem in today's society. Abusers use violence to exert control, to relieve built-up tension, to take revenge and to keep people away. Survivors stay in the relationship for a variety of reasons, including fear, lack of alternatives, family and societal pressure, and economic and emotional dependency. They do not stay because they want or deserve to be abused and domestic abuse is never the victim/survivor's or the child's fault. Alcohol and other drugs are not the cause of battering and a poor intimate relationship, job frustration, sexual problems or child rearing difficulties does not cause violence itself. Abuse hurts all individuals in the family setting and intervention should be available to all members of the family. Unfortunately, most instances go unreported because they feel that there is no help available.

For those who do wish to get help and leave a hostile environment, there are now a number of options for them to choose from. The YWCA supports domestic abuse victims and gives them the option of leaving the hostile environment they live in and stay in their shelter until they can start out a new life. These people who take advantage of the program have the food and shelter they need, but unfortunately many of them have no employment skills or business attire to wear to a simple job interview.

Our group started a program designed to collect clothing to give to the YWCA and Becky's House. We placed a focus upon gathering professional attire, to help out these domestic abuse victims in finding jobs. There was also a need for larger sized clothing so this was an issue we had to tackle. In order to have the largest impact and place a focus upon professional attire, we attempted to contact local companies and ask them to take part in the clothing drive rather than going through friends and family.

Our intention was to drop off large bins to at these companies to gather clothing and pick them up once the clothing drive was over. We created fliers and materials for the company to distribute internally, so that all the employees will be notified of this event. In order to get the greatest response, we will also tried to get one company to sponsor the event to help pay for the costs of it, and tough we were unsuccessful with that aspect of the project, we were able to handle the issue. We shifted our strategy to contact companies that could provide something we needed to run the project and in return, their company name and logo would appear on all of the brochures that were handed out during the drive. We received paper and printing from an office company and bins from a packaging company. We were very pleased to find that these companies were eager to help us out in whatever way they could.

We have also had people call us about donating other items beyond clothing such as furniture. Though we could not handle this, we referred them to the people who could and the items still benefited domestic abuse victims. We did attempt to get several radio stations and television stations to endorse our project and a local radio station called STAR 100.7 agreed to put up information about our drive. However, our contact at the YWCA said that she wouldn't recommend doing so unless we were able to devote our full attention (meaning full time jobs) to the project. We decided to follow the advice of our contact because our project was already becoming a success.

Overall, we feel that the project went much better than we had hoped. We established a schedule to make the most of the short amount of time we had to do the project and this proved to be valuable. Our drive was well received by most people and organizations because of the true benefit it provided the community. We were able to complete the whole project with no cost to us other than time because of the willingness of companies to participate and donate materials to the program. We received over fifty bags of clothing to benefit domestic abuse victims and they were very well received at the YWCA. In the end, a dozen other companies agreed to take part in the drive including Hunsaker, Thabi, four Weight Watchers offices, High Cotton Packaging, POP, the Hotel Del Coronado, ADP, the San Diego Zoo, and Vuetopia. It was a great feat for all of us to start this program from scratch and help out a group of people that truly need it and deserve it. The feeling we all had was amazing when we realized that we were able to actually make a difference.