Care in Action: Drucker Faculty Member Kristine Kawamura’s Community Movement

How a Girl Scout “Kindness Closet” grew into We Care Big—a grassroots initiative supporting K–12 families in Claremont—and how you can join the May 2 community drive.

When Kristine Kawamura talks about what drives her work—as a scholar, a leader, and a neighbor—she keeps returning to a single word: care. At the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management, where she serves as Clinical Professor of Management and Academic Director of Societal and Global Impact, Kawamura has spent years researching how care functions as a strategic resource inside organizations. This spring, she has been putting that research into practice just a few blocks from campus.

“We Care Big” is a community-wide initiative Kawamura founded alongside her family earlier this year to gather food and basic-needs donations for students and families in the Claremont Unified School District (CUSD). The story behind the name is both personal and pointed.

“Almost 45% of our K through 12 students and families in the Claremont school district live under the federal poverty guidelines,” Kawamura says. “We Care Big is a community-wide initiative to gather people who care to contribute food and basic needs to our families, our community members, our schoolmates.”

A movement that started with a turkey

The seeds of We Care Big were planted years before the name existed. As a longtime Girl Scout troop leader, Kawamura watched her daughters and fellow Scouts earn their Silver Awards. One daughter along with her friend and troop member built what they called the Kindness Closet at CUSD—a simple, dignifying way to provide clothing to classmates experiencing homelessness. That project connected the Kawamura family to Rosa Leong, who now leads the CUSD Student and Family Resource Center.

Fast forward to last November. Kawamura and her husband heard the community’s calls for Thanksgiving support for Claremont families and reached out to Leong with a couple turkeys and boxes of food. Through December and January, they kept going back—and what they were learning about the scale of local need stayed with them.

“One night I looked at my husband, and I said, ‘You know what, I want to start a movement. We’re going to start a movement, and we’re going to start it tomorrow. And it’s called We Care Big.’”

She borrowed a button machine from the Honnold Library—“because you have to have a button with a movement”—pinned one to her jacket, and got to work. She approached the Drucker School’s dean and associate dean, who quickly offered their support. She spoke with faculty and students. She made flyers, more buttons, and set up two collection stations: one at the Drucker School and a second at the KGI Oasis Apartments, under request from graduate students who wanted to help. Within six weeks, a network of friends, family, students, and faculty had packaged more than 30 bags of food and toiletries for the newly opened CUSD Student and Family Resource Center, which held its ribbon cutting on February 19.

A national grant, a local drive

In recent weeks, We Care Big received another lift. A CGU colleague suggested Kawamura apply to the American Empathy Project, an American Humanist Association initiative awarding $100,000 in grants to community changemakers across the country to mobilize their neighborhoods and, as the AHA puts it, “put empathy into action.” The project centers on a nationwide day of collective action: Saturday, May 2. Kawamura submitted her application. The grant came through—and with it, the fuel for a larger community moment.

In Claremont, that moment runs from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m., in the parking lot across from the Burkle Family Building, home of the Drucker School. The We Care Big community donation drive is open to anyone in Claremont and the surrounding area, and organizers are asking neighbors to bring fresh and non-perishable food and basic necessities that will go directly to local K–12 families through the CUSD Student and Family Resource Center. Volunteers from the Drucker student community, Kawamura’s family, and longtime friends will be on site to receive donations.

Faculty as neighbors

We Care Big is a striking example of what can happen when a faculty member’s scholarship, leadership, and sense of place converge. Kawamura’s research on care as a core organizational resource—the idea that collaboration, resilience, and engagement flow from people who genuinely care for one another—reads differently when you see it embodied in a Saturday-morning food drive, a kindness closet built by fourth-graders, or a button pinned to a lapel.

For Drucker, which has long framed management as a liberal art with responsibility to society, Kawamura’s work is also a reminder that impact often begins close to home.

“So please join your community,” Kawamura says. “We’d love to invite you to care for our neighbors and our families with donations of food and basic necessities.”

To learn more about Kawamura’s research and teaching at the Drucker School, visit her CGU faculty page.

About the Drucker School. The Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management at Claremont Graduate University educates leaders who advance organizations and society through the practice of management as a liberal art. Learn more about Drucker faculty, programs, and research at cgu.edu/drucker.

Join the We Care Big Community Donation Drive

When: Saturday, May 2, 9 a.m. – 12 p.m.
Where: Parking lot across from the Burkle Family Building, Claremont Graduate University (1021 N Dartmouth Ave)
What to bring: Fresh and non-perishable food and basic household necessities. All donations go directly to local K–12 families through the CUSD Student and Family Resource Center.

Specific donation requests:

• Food: Fresh fruits and vegetables, Fresh proteins (beef, chicken), Milk and milk alternatives, Bread and tortillas, Canned fruits and vegetables, Canned meats, Rice, beans, and lentils, Pasta and pasta sauce, Peanut butter, Snacks and breakfast cereals
• Basic necessities: Laundry detergent, Soap and shampoo, Toothpaste and toothbrushes, Feminine hygiene products, Gas cards

Can’t make it on May 2? Donations are also being collected on an ongoing basis at the Drucker School and at the KGI Oasis Apartments.