MOST OUTSTANDING COMMUNITY SERVICE/INVOLVEMENT NOMINEE
Ole Miss Vietnamese American Student Association
Canned Food Drive/Operation Christmas Child Project/Pho Night/Planting with Hill Country Roots
Provide a detailed description of the event and the population it served. Details MUST include: date of event, number of participants, program purpose (goals, objectives, etc.) and use of resources (finances, community support, etc.).
To enrich our members and provide them the chance to give back to their community, we offered a number of both philanthropic and community service opportunities. Four prominent occasions were our canned food drive (October 13th), Operation Christmas Child (November 17th), planting with Hill Country Roots (February 12th), and Pho Night (February 26th).
For our canned food drive for Ole Miss’s food pantry Grove Grocery, we encouraged our members in supplying the pantry with necessary stock and raising more donations than the previous year. In the end, 58 of our members participated in the drive, and we donated 515 cans to Grove Grocery, which was 211 more than last year, on October 13th.
For our Operation Christmas Child project, we wanted to make sure no child was left without a present during the holidays. We had our members fill shoeboxes with various essentials for a growing child: toys, clothes, school supplies, and hygiene products. At our holiday social on November 17th, we collected a total of 18 gift boxes. 40 of our members contributed, and our boxes were sent everywhere around the world, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon, and the Central African Republic.
Since our Pho Night on February 26th was funded by Grove Grocery, we sought to guarantee assistance in furthering their mission: to end campus hunger and alleviate poverty by discreetly providing nutritious food products and hygiene products free of charge to students and employees in the Ole Miss community. Because the pantry is student-led & student-operated and suffered many setbacks due to COVID-19, it often struggles with finding volunteers to work shifts. If shifts are unfilled, there is no way for patrons to acquire food from the facilities. To address this challenge, we promoted the volunteer opportunity at our event. As of today, eighteen of our own members now regularly volunteer with Grove Grocery. Moreover, Pho Night allowed the pantry to branch out to new patrons, fight food insecurity by funding an event that offered free pho to every attendee and receiving 75 canned goods donated by our members, and further the notion that their facilities are welcoming to all cultures.
For our event with Hill Country Roots on February 12th, we aided the organization in planting trees in Oxford. Although we only had 18 members participate, our efforts were still significant. At the end of the day, with the help of 180 additional volunteers from the Oxford community, we were able to plant 1,000 tree saplings in one day. Additionally, our efforts led to Hill Country Roots winning the “Best New Organization” award from Ole Miss.
For all of these events, we posted our graphic on social media & in GroupMe as well as sending reminders to our members. Our members were very active and passionate, so we were able to have a great impact on our local and global communities. Needless to say, it’s been an outstanding year of sharing our resources with others.
What efforts were used to motivate and involve the organization's members?
For every philanthropic and community service event hosted, we incentivized our members to participate by offering both member and family points. At the end of the year, the ten members with the most points are rewarded with a dinner paid by OleVASA and every member in the family with the most points receives a gift card.