College of Business Administration

Social and Ethical Issues in Business

Foster Care Dinner and Food Drive

GROUP MEMBERS:

Chris Goble
Michael Hess
Tanya Nagy
Robert Parsons
Claudia Susi

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

The objective of our project was to generate funds and food donations in order to help out local individuals within our society. This was accomplished first by contacting local businesses to help us conduct a food drive. These donations would be turned around and donated to a local foster family and the remaining would go to the Salvation Army. Mission Bay Chiropractic was the private company we contacted and with which we coordinated the food drive.

Additionally, we contacted local foster families to propose the idea of cooking a holiday dinner for the children. After numerous attempts we finally got approval from New Alternatives, a foster home with nine adolescent girls. A week before the dinner was to be given the group visited the establishment and generated a wish list of what the individual girls would like for Christmas. In order to produce the gifts on the list we contacted local business to raise money for this cause. With all of our efforts we were able to raise a grand total of $640.00 for gifts and other expenses.

The social and ethical reasons for our program included Utilitarianism, Ethics of Virtue and Social Contract Theory. Under the Utilitarian framework we believe each person's welfare was equally important and each girl at New Alternatives felt as important as the next. Under the Ethics of Virtue, it was assumed that we are all essential and alike--we all need the same basic things to survive in life. Lastly, as a group we learned to focus on who we are and not on what we do.

The overall outcome of our program was very successful. The canned-food drive brought in a total of 2000 pounds of food, 1800 of which was donated to the Salvation Army and the remaining amount was given to New Alternatives. Without the local business support and donations we would not have been able to provide for the girls.

We learned a lot from this project including how lucky we are to have families that give us the support and understanding that we all need. Unfortunately not everyone is this lucky, such as many of the girls at New Alternatives. Although we could not provide them with a family we did the best we could do by spending time to get to know them and to understand how difficult it must be.

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