It’s the holiday season and it can be hard to balance giving and receiving gifts. It’s easy to give back through Rowan’s Future Business Leaders of America toy drive which will be donated to the Robin’s Nest. Read on to learn more about FBLA, the “Shooting for Santa” toy drive and the Robin’s Nest charity. Make someone else happy this holiday season by giving them a gift they’ll appreciate.
* Interview with Alex LaVallee, President of Future Business Leaders of America.
1. Can you tell me a little about Future Business leaders of America and what the goals of the club are?
Rowan Future Business Leaders of America is a local chapter to the largest student business organization in the world. On campus we try a few different things that help us stand out. Being that we are a newly petitioning organization, we try our best to maintain good retention of our members. We are not restrictive to business students and encourage students from all majors to come out and participate! As a group, we like to focus on philanthropic work–like the toy drive–and other activities that help further the success of our member. We are currently trying to work out resume building workshops as well as networking events for the future!
2. As far as the toy drive, have you done this event in the past? If so, can you tell me a little bit about how it went last year?
This is the first time we are doing a toy drive. I mean it’s actually one of the first major events that we are collectively working towards. We hosted an event in which the founders of Barefoot Wine came and spoke to the students of Rowan University, but this is the first thing that we have really done and looked at as “our thing.” That being said, it is something that I would like to make an annual event since it is such a good cause. We are also working with Leadership Rowan and Athletics to make it more of a University-wide event!
3. How did you get involved with the Robin’s Nest and can you tell me about this organization?
FBLA’s Faculty adviser–Steve Kozachyn–actually put me in contact with Robin’s Nest. He told me about the work that they do to help out struggling children and adolescences of South Jersey and I was really interested in learning more. I went down to visit their facilities one day and had a really great meeting with their PR guy and Volunteer coordinator and sort of asked them what they needed or how they wanted to collaborate. They do an annual ‘Santa’s Workshop’ event and told me that any donation would really benefit so I decided that we were going to do a toy drive for them and all proceeds would go directly to the children that they affect.
4. What is your goal for the “Shooting for Santa” event?
Shooting for Santa is really something that we hopped on board with. Gary Baker over at Leadership Rowan told me that he wanted to do some sort of toy collecting event at the double header basketball gameagainst Rutgers Camden so I was like “hey let’s work together on this.” From there it has really blossomed into working with Athletics and a few other organizations on campus that were gung ho about doinga toy drive but didn’t really know where to start. With Shooting for Santa we want it to be more of a public display primarily to spread awareness for all of the fantastic work they do over at Robin’s Nest.
5. Can you just tell me some overall information about the toy drive?
The toys that we’re collecting can be basically anything. The only stipulation is the toy has to be unopened and unwrapped–these directions were given to us by Robin’s Nest. We do realize that not a lot of students carry around unopened toys with them so we did open the option for monetary donations as well. We have been collecting cash and Boro Bucks and 100% of the proceeds are going right into buying toys for the children.
6. Tell me anything else you want people to know about your club, this organization or the event itself: why should people participate, etc.?
Rowan FBLA meets every other Thursday in Robinson 305 at 7:00 pm. Our next meeting will be Nov. 25. I would say come out to our meetings primarily if you are interested in meeting some new people and sharing some really cool ideas. Next semester we will be meeting every week and for more information on that I suggest liking us on Facebook, “Rowan Future Business Leaders of America.”