College of Business Administration

Social and Ethical Issues in Business

YWCA Battered Women's Shelter

GROUP MEMBERS:

Elizabeth Beeman
Rosie Castaneda
Jennifer Dempsey
D'Ann Dobbins

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
When our group got together and thought about what kind of a social change project we could do, we came up with all the "normal" ideas; recycling, planting, and helping others. Then we looked at the dynamics of our group - immediately we realized we were all women and perhaps we should do something that benefits women. We realized that women who are in domestic violence situations need help. That many times when they get the courage to leave they do so without anything but the clothes on their back. So we decided that we should help the YWCA and the homes for women that they run. With the holidays coming we thought it would be great to create "necessity bags' that could be given to the women who come to the houses.

In doing a little further research we discovered that every 15 seconds a woman in the US is beaten. These women often have children and are scared and don't know what to do or where to go. The US Department of Justice estimates that 97% of assaults on spouses or ex-spouses are committed by men against women. I contacted Christiana Woodward at the YWCA and discussed our idea with her. She thought our idea was really a good idea. I asked her what kinds of items the house would need. She had a meeting with her staff and came up with a list of items they thought would be good.

We then began the hunt for donations. We split up the list Christiana gave us and began to contact companies. We thought we could contact places like Oral-B, Scope, Crest, Covergirl, Revlon, Goodie, Loreal, and larger stores like Target, K-Mart and Wal-Mart. To our surprise none of these people helped. We were told things like "we've already contributed what we could for the year" or "we only give to this one specific charity" or "if we were to help you then we would have to help all the people like you". It was very discouraging but we rallied and came up with other ideas like distributors and mini-fund raisers at work and even our friends and family. We knew that our idea was a good one and we just needed to find a way to make it work. Most of the items that we collected came from a local Sav-On Drugs. While trying to promote a mini-fund raiser at work Elizabeth was given the name of a manager at the Sav-On Drug store. After contacting this person he donated over $230.00 in supplies. Jennifer was able to contact a dental supply distributor who donated toothbrushes and floss. Rosie and D'Ann explained our plan to their friends and family and collected over $100.00 cash. We took the cash and purchased the other items that Christiana suggested we obtain. The four of us came together as a group to put together the "necessity bags" and an extra "child bag". Because some of the houses allow children we collected some items for them. The experience of seeing everything we had collected was a little overwhelming. Since everyone had different stuff it wasn't until we got together that we actually saw everything in one place at one time. An overwhelming feeling of success surrounded all of us. All in all we collected over $500.00 worth of merchandise. Our presentation to the YWCA happened in class during our group presentation. Christiana Woodward was very helpful and very grateful to receive the "necessity bags."

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