By Kyle Kern Staff writer
Ready to go MADD? Make a Difference Day is a chance for Susquehanna students to spend their Saturday volunteering in the community. The event, which is in its second year, will be held on Oct. 22 from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m.
All 13 Greek Life organizations on campus will participate in the event. More than 200 students are expected to help give back to the community throughout the morning.
The various organizations involved in Make a Difference Day include, but are not limited to, the 5K Tomato Trot, Haven and a new partner for this year, Focus Health.
The service projects will be involved in all aspects of the community: parks and recreation, senior living centers, health facilities, community clean up, meal programs and community assistant centers.
Seniors Jillian Houser and Noah Diaz-Portalatin are the coordinators for the Make a Difference Day for Susquehanna.
Houser, a public relations major, is the one in charge of the entire event, or the “mastermind” as her Johnson Center for Civic Engagement co-workers said.
Houser loves the opportunity to give back to the community and utilized MADD as a way to give back. She said: “[Make A Difference Day] is my baby. It’s exciting to see how it turns out and great to help out local organizations.”
Diaz-Portalatin, a biology major, is in charge of recruiting and coordinating activities for the event. “It is nice to have events like this to [help students] become aware of other service needs in different areas of the community,” he said. “Also it is really good to put on such an event for Greek Life, to show all that Greek Life can do for the community.”
The event is expected to be just as big as last year, when Susquehanna’s Make a Difference Day event won an award from the Make a Difference Day Campaign for making a remarkable difference in the surrounding community.
Susquehanna’s branch of Make a Difference Day received $10,000 for grant money from the award.
In order to win the award, Susquehanna had to meet four requirements: identification of a national or community service need, organization of the volunteer project to effectively address the need of the project, overall performance on volunteer project on Make a Difference Day and estimate of long-term impact of the volunteer project on initially identified need.
Last year the event touched 26 organizations, involved nearly 300 students and covered eight communities, according to the Make a Difference Day website.
One organization, Saint Matthew’s, held a chili cook-off where the students helped fundraise money.
This year, three organizations: Point of Light, Arby’s Foundation and Tenga, combine to sponsor the nationwide service event. Tenga, a digital marketing service company, offers $140,000 distributed for 14 awards given to 14 honorees each year in partnership with the Make a Difference Day Campaign.
Arby’s Foundation is a charity connected to the Arby’s Restaurant chain. The charity works toward the goal of ending child hunger in the United States.
The Point of Light Foundation is the world’s largest organization dedicated to volunteer service, according to its website. It is involved in 30 different countries, reports 30 million hours of service per year on 250,000 projects and reports that the volunteer hours combined are worth $635 million annually.
The Point of Light foundation’s mission, as stated on its website, is to “inspire more people to become volunteers, increase the impact of volunteer service, equip volunteers to solve specific problems, and to create a culture that encourages volunteerism.”
Houser and Diaz-Portalatin are working on filling out the application to be considered for this year’s National Make a Difference award, while giving back to the community in which they have contributed to for so many years.
The Johnson Center for Civic Engagement is always open for questions about getting involved in the community. The center’s office is located in the lower level of Degenstein. It also has a Facebook page under its official name.
Students can help advertise their involvement in the Make a Difference Day campaign by using #gomadsu.
