This week in the Corporate Social Responsibility course, we talked about an article discussing whether corporations should take DEI into account when hiring employees. I think it is definitely something to consider and I really agree with how we should provide equal opportunity to promote equal hiring. If we give students the opportunity to go to college and gain the education necessary for these positions, the application pool automatically increases. And the ability to hire more people based on qualification and hard work also increases. I also enjoyed our discussion on Wednesday on whether the BRT 2019 statement is rhetoric or not. I believe that the statement creates awareness and a start for companies to think about creating value for all stakeholders in a company. But, for accountability, I think there should be more done for consumers to really see the companies making change, rather than hiding behind bold statements and plans through marketing.

At my internship this week, Sophie and I took our ideas on how the Sospesa project can be improved and researched how specifically our research can be used. We created a plan in our presentation with proposals to implement our ideas. One idea we had was to add a donation box in the market where people could donate canned food and snacks for our boxes. We also had an idea to add more education on the website to show the food insecurity problem to people. And when working with other organizations we would like to implement a subscription that is available to people donated to foster consistent donations. Our data we produced showing the donations in euros needed for the next two sessions of Sospesa is more than the expected donations. So, subscriptions and working with a broader range of organizations can help with this issue. Tomorrow we are presenting our ideas to the group and start thinking about how to get some of the ideas they like into the next phase.

Since my last post on the weekend I traveled to Barcelona, Spain and in Milan I tried some foods the past few days. I loved everything about Barcelona including the culture, the people, and the sites. We went to the Sagrada Familia and it was so beautiful. We walked around for hours looking at buildings, shopping, and trying new foods. My new favorite type of food is tapas since we got to try many things instead of having one meal. I purchased a few things from a thrift store and jewelry from the town. We also went on a sailing boat on Saturday and saw the race boats practicing for the race at the end of the summer. There was an American, Italian, and French race boat out. That night we went to a cool stock market bar with the students from Lehigh staying in Barcelona. As the “stocks” went up and down the prices of different drinks changed. And there was a market crash where all the prices of the drinks went down.