College of Business Administration

Social and Ethical Issues in Business

St. John's Food Drive

GROUP MEMBERS:

Raul Arreola
Ferris Shahrestani
Maria Tedesco

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

Food Drive at St. John Episcopal Church and Parish Most of us probably took for granted the value of our home, family and the food we ate until we reached adolescence or adulthood. Once we realized the value of the 'necessities,' we learned that in order to possess or maintain them we must dedicate pieces of our time, talents and earnings to society in hopes of a just return. Our group's social change project became a 'Food Drive for Homeless, by Children', and we developed our project to benefit as many parties as were involved. We hope that the children would contribute to those less fortunate that don't have the 'luxuries' of life, like food.

Our team's ultimate objective was to not only include children in our project, but to have them come to realize the importance of contributing to society.

We held our week-long canned food drive at St. John's Episcopal Church and Parish. We had a total of six classes from grades three through eight, containing about 20-25 students. We agreed on keeping the involvement of the children as simple as possible so that there was no loss of interest or energy due to a complex task or a long period of time. The actual implementation process can be broken into three parts. First, we spoke with each of the classes, providing them with the basic information about ourselves and our goal and also discussing how they could start contributing to society by spending some of their time and resources to help others. Second, we asked them to donate canned goods and deposit them into the large bins that were provided to us by St. Vincent de Paul, a local Christian charity that we collaborated with to distribute the food. At the end of the food drive, to demonstrate that there is a reward, though usually intrinsic, to helping others. We got a local pizza restaurant to donate 15 pizzas that we provide to the three classes that brought in the most canned goods.

There are numerous ethical frameworks that can be applied to such a general program. The three most relevant to us were the deontological framework, the utilitarian framework and justice theory.

From a deontological framework, is it our duty to help those in society that can't help themselves. We felt that yes, in fact it was. We believe that people have intrinsic worth, outside of their monetary contribution to society. And that it is the duty of any moral agent to help those without the means to help themselves.

A utilitarian framework applied in that the project provided the greatest good for the greatest number. The program was good because it's outcome was favorable to the homeless as well as the children. Usually, those that give of themselves get an intrinsic reward for their efforts. We furthered this cause by providing the children that really helped with a tangible reward as well - a pizza party.

Finally justice theory asks us to treat equals equally and inequals unequally. We feel that regardless of socio-economic status people are equal in the need for the basic tenets of life. And the allocation of scarce resources, in this case food and a place to sleep, are concerns of distributive justice. John Rawls asks us to act from behind a veil of ignorance, forgetting who we are in society. Add to that the premise that we ought not take actions that make the least advantaged members of society worse off than they are and there becomes a clear need for active public support in programs designed to help others.

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