Rho Chapter’s Serving Up Hope!
Every year Rho Chapter hosts a mud volleyball tournament to raise money for Hope Heart Institute. Hope Heart is a nonprofit organization which serves humanity through cardiovascular research and education. They are dedicated to preventing and treating heart and blood vessel disease. This event is something so many different groups on the Western Kentucky University (WKU) campus look forward to every year! In 2022, Rho Chapter raised over $3,000 for Hope Heart Institute.
It truly is a great way to see the entire WKU community come together for such a good cause. Heart disease is such a common thing in the world we live in, a majority of people have been impacted either through family or personally, this event allows us to truly see how much of an impact we can make on those around us!
Alachua Academy with Alpha Omicron
Alachua Academy is a juvenile delinquent program for young girls. Alpha Omicron Chapter visited the program twice, and members played board games with some of the girls and did some fun service projects (painting encouragement rocks and wrote cards for the Ronald McDonald house). The girls were so much fun to work with, and chapter members say it was great being able to do service that felt “hands on” because they haven’t had the chance to do so in a while!
This is my favorite project because it felt like we had actually made an impact on some of the girls. They shared their backgrounds and hopes for the future with us. I went both times my chapter visited, and the second time, many of the girls were asking about members they’d met before, wondering where they were! It just showed how impactful it was to them!
Epsilon Chapter focuses on flood relief
In 2021, there were tragic floods in Dickson and Humphreys counties in Tennessee. Epsilon Chapter partnered with the Tennessee Tech’s Alumni Center, Student Government, and other student organizations to collect donations for flood victims. Chapter members raised money and took physical donations to relief sites. The entire Tennessee Tech campus helped pick up a community in need, and many Epsilon actives and alumni were impacted.
This was a project that meant a lot to us, and it was so impactful! We were able to connect to many groups across campus and the community to join us in serving. The Service Learning Center, Student Government, Alumni Center, and Epsilon Chapter worked with leaders in the affected areas to help as much as we could. It showed how serving together can make a huge change, and it built relationships for future projects!
Rho Chapter’s Fall 2022 University Community Projects: Ale-8 Flower Project and Kindness Rocks Project
For their Ale-8 Flower project, Rho Chapter filled Ale-8 bottles with flowers and wrapped a new label around the bottle that said “OPA Loves You Bunches!” They handed out these bottles to students on campus and everyone was extremely grateful and expressed how much they loved it! All of the members of Rho Chapter also had fun creating these bottles during a craft night and they were all so excited to see the final result! There were around 80 bottles to hand out to students on campus!
For the Kindness Rocks Project, Rho members painted uplifting sayings, cute pictures, or even silly jokes on rocks. They then handed them out to students and placed them around campus. This was the chapter’s way of making students smile and giving them something that made them happy!
Being the head of the University Community Project Committee this semester, I wanted to have service projects that truly brightened students’ days. These service projects were a lot of fun to both plan, execute, and see the gratefulness of those we served. I am so thankful for the members of Rho Chapter who supported me throughout these service projects, and were just as excited as I was to serve the students at Western Kentucky University. Through these projects, it was amazing to give back to our university community and offer ways to brighten their day!
