Here is the speech that I gave at the Fall Recognition Dinner for Students Engaging Students. I feel that it does a pretty good job summarizing our service efforts throughout the fall semester. Enjoy!
For those of you who don’t know, my name is Dani Lichliter and I am the Outreach Director of Students Engaging Students. In September, the Outreach committee added seven new members and we became more handsome than ever. With a committee of 15, our accomplishments were able to be many and diverse. We kicked off the semester by planning an in-meeting development where we sent a huge care package and about 50 letters to a group of Marines in Afghanistan.
We also revamped the consultation station, the bulletin board area outside of 209 HUB, which now features a Council of LionHearts member of the month and lots of information about volunteering, and has lots of sparkles too!
Our Into the Streets projects were as successful as ever: we provided 16 separate opportunities for Penn State students to participate in service-learning. This totaled 337 hours of service! Based on our new model, team leaders had less to do in preparation for the projects which made being a team leader and easy and fun task for all SES members. Thanks to the hard work of Lan and Ali, our Into the Streets liaisons, our ITS projects went smoothly throughout the semester. While some of the new members were able to actually attend an ITS, we also created a New Member ITS that allowed everyone the opportunity to understand the ITS model.
Meg, our Special Projects chair, with help of many others, organized a Thanksgiving Basket Drive that provided 42 baskets that each were full of entire Thanksgiving dinner for the Centre County AIDS Project. We were able to donate at least 20 overflow baskets and over 100 dollars in gift cards to the State College Food Bank as well, because of the ample donations. We are currently organizing a Snowflake drive that will provide presents to the kids of the AIDS Project this holiday season.
Our success in service as an organization this semester has been incredible and I am inspired by our commitment to bettering the community but also helping Penn State students become involved in service as well. These accomplishments could not have been completed without the hard work and dedication of the members of Outreach. Thank you guys so much for all you have done–your commitment makes my job easy.
What also makes my job easy is how well this group gets along. Outreach is made up of a whole bunch of fun-loving, outgoing, talkative and creative people. We have bonded as a family and have even cooked Mac n’ Cheese and Thanksgiving dinner together. And who could forget Basso’s awesome whipped cream game?!?!
Thank you all for having such a passion for what we do. I have so thoroughly enjoyed being the director of the Outreach committee, and I couldn’t ask for a more handsome or loving group! Although we are going to miss Lan while she is studying abroad, we know she will be doing great things in China! For the rest of you, I can’t wait for another successful semester with you all!