College of Business Administration

GROUP MEMBERS:

Asai
Lam
Lopez
Mustafa
Rogow

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

Monach High School is a comprehensive secondary school program providing education for homeless youth, ages 13 through 19. These students live on the streets in San Diego, in temporary, unsafe and inadequate housing situations, or in an emergency shelter. Monarch High School's program allows students to continue pursuing all the requirements necessary to obtain a high school diploma, G.E.D., or California High School Proficiency certificate. Each course of study is tailored to the student's individual educational needs. Through a variety of community-based agencies, this program also offers extensive career guidance, employment referrals, and training in independent living skills. Personal counseling, medical, and dental care are also available. Each student receives a minimum of five hours of instruction per day.

The program is currently staffed with two credentialed teachers and three teacher assistants. Their mission is a commitment to helping homeless and at-risk teenagers reclaim their lives by providing a safe environment and a broad spectrum of financial, emotional, and educational support.

We are dedicated to assisting Monarch High School and these students in the attainment of their short-term and long-term goals by helping the school acquire clothing, technology and most importantly, backpacks since the students must carry everything they own with them. We, along with the school believe that every child has promise, and that we are privileged to help them realize their promise. Our project was designed as a collection drive for Backpacks, Clothing and Technology individually by using the contacts we each have at home, work, and social circles. The secondary focus of the project was to assist Monarch High School in its effort to build a new school building through identifying corporate partners and linking them to the school.

The project got off to a good start. As a team we worked well together and found that we all agreed the school was a valuable asset to the homeless community. We each discussed our individual strategy for collecting the needed items and were able to make good suggestions to each other on how to improve our plans. Due to our different jobs and social circles, we were able to collect backpacks and clothing from the university staff, business fraternities and local companies. In the end, we collected 511 separate items with a total estimated value of $1,889.00. We used very conservative figures for the value of each item, which closely mirrors the price one might find at a thrift shop. The value of our time was based on the actual hourly rate we individually earn. We decided that it would be more realistic and accurate to use those numbers than a blanket rate of $10.00 per hour. From a deontological point of view, it would be morally wrong to lie about the cost of our time whether it would inflate the positive balance in the cost/benefit analysis or not. Due to the higher pay rate of some of the team members, the costs were a little on the high side. Still, even with the higher expense for labor, we managed to have a positive cost/benefit result collecting $1,889.00 worth of items while expending only $1,490.00. This gave us a positive balance of $399.00.

The ethical frameworks that apply were a bit complex. It seemed that we could apply many of them to what we were doing. We decided that we would take different perspectives and see which of the frameworks applied. From our perspective as a group, we found that an anti-utilitarian concept seemed to apply. Rather than take an action that benefited the many forsaking the few or the one, we took action that benefited the few believing that it was morally right to put our efforts towards the welfare of this small group of homeless students rather than efforts to benefit the greater population as a whole. From the perspective of the High School, we saw the Justice theory at work. Monarch High School believes it an injustice that homeless kids can't get an education, which is guaranteed to every American child if the have a home in a school district. The concept of compensatory justice is applied by providing the education, compensating for their lack of a home. From the perspective of Bruce Rogow, it is the Ethic of Care, which can be applied. He has forged an on going relationship with the school through annual backpack collection drives.

Our success can be characterized by the volume of items we collected and through the corporate contacts we help to provide for the school. Where we missed the mark can be in the area of relationship building with the school. We lost contact with Susan Armenta, the Head Teacher. We were unable to reach her for almost a month and have not been able to determine what happened to sour the relationship. We feel that what we accomplished did help the students and if nothing else, that is a good outcome. We also took note of the positive impact all these social change projects have had and the fact that they occur each time your MGT 356 class is offered, making a continuing positive impact on our community. But then, you already know that.