UCI students learn the biz

Jeff Benson

Business students typically work toward a higher standard of life and

higher-paying jobs than most people. But at least one group of

students from the UC Irvine Graduate School of Management MBA program

refuses to neglect those who may not be as fortunate.

Eleven UCI MBA students have been helping out behind the scenes at

Costa Mesa nonprofit shelter Share Our Selves. They haven’t been

working with the shelter’s 1,500 needy families directly, but instead

are operating the day-to-day food-delivery system, streamlining the

agency’s check-writing system and holding bake-sale fundraisers.

“By seeing a side of Orange County that few people see -- where

people live in poverty -- you definitely gain a perspective,” said

UCI Graduate School of Management spokesman David Lim. “Hopefully, it

will help them make decisions and keep a bigger picture of things.”

Many of the students’ volunteer contributions provided them with

analytical skills and real-life experiences that aren’t covered in

their classes, so they can learn about how nonprofit agencies are run

and adapt their findings to their own final projects, Lim said.

“Ethics and social responsibility are the big buzzwords in

business these days,” Lim said. “If you look at the other MBA

programs, they’ll say they stress social responsibility.”

Some among the MBA students said they’re donating their time

simply for personal fulfillment.

Second-year MBA student Jeff Barkehanai said he’s volunteered at

Share Our Selves for a year and a half by organizing the food pantry

and the Adopt-a-Family drop-off center at the Orange County

Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa. Local families and organizations dropped

off food and gifts to families they sponsored for the holidays.

Barkehanai and several others helped enter their personal data into a

database for recordkeeping.

“We sit down and talk to Share Our Selves organizers for various

projects,” Barkehanai said. “We’ve looked through the operations of

food delivery, and others took a look at what type of monetary funds

should be given people and what is the operational way to do it

without fraud. It’s certainly opened my eyes to the aspects of a

nonprofit.”

The business program has viewed Share Our Selves for several years

as an ideal way to earn credit toward Challenge for Charity, which is

a competition among university MBA programs to donate hours and money

to local charities. Awards will be presented in March to the schools

that donated the most money and hours, Barkehanai said.