Meeting Story

Headline: New Group Sets out to Give

The white board stood mostly blank at the beginning of the first meeting for GIVE, a university group aimed at completing community service projects.

After an hour of brainstorming the board was covered with philanthropy ideas.

“We’re shooting for open-ended projects that people can get involved with,” said senior Edison Kent, ASWSU director of philanthropy and community outreach.

GIVE is an offshoot of ASWSU’s philanthropy branch. The organization plans to receive funding from ASWSU and the Center for Civic Engagement.

“[GIVE] is really our own beast,” Kent said. “The CCE and ASWSU are groups that are willing to support us because they believe in students getting involved and making a difference.”

The concept of GIVE started with senior Erika Schoonmaker. To generate funding and ideas, Schoonmaker teamed up with Kent. Though the group has only had one meeting and is in the process of becoming a university-recognized club, members of GIVE are eager to make a difference.

GIVE intends to switch off between local, regional, and national or international projects, Schoonmaker said.

“If we can make service fun and something people want to do then it will go a long way,” Schoonmaker said.

The nine members in attendance on Thursday discussed their mission statement, t-shirts ideas, and various outreach projects they plan on becoming involved with.

Schoonmaker unveiled the logo for GIVE. The design is a hand forming a peace sign with GIVE ingrained in the middle and the words “Hope, Love, Back” under it.

GIVE plans on creating t-shirts for their organization. Kent hopes a mass distribution of t-shirts will create a buzz around campus and encourage student involvement.

“We are going to figure out a way to get t-shirts to everybody; and by everybody I mean a lot of people,” Kent said.

For every project GIVE works on, members will come up with a different t-shirt design. The t-shirts will include the ASWSU and GIVE logos on them along with a story or statistic about the cause the project is intended to help.

Organizations that GIVE discussed contributing to include TOMS Shoes, Invisible Children, Habitat for Humanity, Make-A-Wish Foundation, and Ten Thousand Villages.

Sophomore Alicia Reddy proposed the idea of raising awareness against drunken driving. The issue stemmed after the death of recent graduate Tanya Guseva, a passenger that died in a drunken driving accident over the summer outside of Pullman.

“I think doing something against drunk driving would be something very educational for this campus,” Schoonmaker said.

To make a lasting impact on WSU students, Reddy proposed setting up a mock crash at Terrell Mall to show the harsh reality of drunken driving accidents.

“For this thing you want the shock factor,” Kent said. “For one specific day you park this car on the hill. I think it would work really well.”

In order to turn their brainstorming into action, GIVE thought of ways to reach out to students. Possible solutions included setting up a booth in the CUB, designing a Facebook group, displaying GIVE information on the CUB electronic board, and passing out fliers.

GIVE plans to meet every Thursday in CUE 319 at 5:30.