By Pete Aldridge
Arizona Daily Wildcat
November 21, 1997

Philanthropy is good for the heart and resume

Editor:

I would like to commend Jennifer McKean on her article "A Heart's Reward". I have been involved with similar volunteer projects to those that Jennifer describes and can attest to the many benefits that volunteerism provides. For the second year, I and fellow graduate business students(MBA) in the Eller Graduate School of Management are involved in a philanthropic competition called the Central Charity Challenge. We are competing with students at University of Texas, Arizona State Univ. and several other universities to raise money for and provide community service to charitable organizations.

Fifty percent of the money that we raise goes to a national organization called the Inner City Games Foundation and the remainder will go to benefit our local charity of choice this school year, the Our Town Family Center. Last year, the graduate students involved in the CCC raised nearly $25,000 for charity...this year that figure will probably double. Examples of community service projects that our MBA students have been involved in include: sorting and bundling donated clothing which will go to needy communities along the U.S.-Mexico border, providing classroom business education to local schoolchildren through Junior Achievement of Southern Arizona, many more, and designing databases for Habitat for Humanity.

Through these experiences, MBA students are learning that as business leaders we have a responsibility to work with and learn from those in our communities that are less fortunate than us.

While potentially enhancing our resumes, we have the opportunity to enhance our lives and the lives of others. I will close this letter with a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. which I saw in a recent Tucson Weekly article, "Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice that make philanthropy necessary."

Pete Aldridge
Graduate business student