From BIZ, with love

First-year business student Evelyn Parisi takes a big blue marker and jots down a note on a blank notecard, then decorates it with polka dots and squiggles. She’s one of more than 550 first-year business students in the BIZ 101 first-year experience course.

Other students in the class write notes with encouraging messages, like “You are awesome!”, “Make today great!” and “Have fun every day!”

The notes will be sent to the Dayton Foodbank to be included in bags containing healthy meals for kids enrolled in its Good-To-Go Backpack Program. The program provides bags with healthy meals for students in several schools around the Dayton area. They are discreetly put into the students’ backpacks to take home, so they have meals for the weekends when they aren't able to get free school lunches. 

According to the Dayton Foodbank, there are many children throughout the Dayton area who receive free or reduced lunches at school. But over the weekend, these same children are at a high risk of going hungry. The program currently serves an estimated 1,500 children.

University of Dayton’s School of Business Administration decided to help out with a simple facet of the program — love notes. To brighten the days of the bag recipients, UD’s first-year business students wrote several encouraging notes to put in the bags. 

“I’m just super blessed to have the opportunity to give back to the community,” Parisi said. “It inspires me to do the same when I work in a business some day.”

Heidi Reynolds, a first-year business student, agreed. “I'm glad that UD allowed me the opportunity to make a kid’s day,” she said.

“I’m glad that UD allowed me the opportunity to make a kid’s day.”

This project was started in conjunction with the Business Wisdom through International, Service and Experiential Education (BWISE) program. It's part of the UD School of Business Administration's commitment to providing their business students with experiential learning to develop business wisdom and knowledge. 

The program requires students to take part in two of the three components: service, international and experiential. The Foodbank volunteer experience was put in place to introduce the first-year students to the type of work that they should be doing to complete their graduation requirements.

“We want to teach our students how important community is, and for them to know that you don't need to do big things to make a change — small, simple things can make all the difference,” said Misty Brun, lecturer in the School of Business Administration.