Crafting for Charity

Creative Ideas for Community Service Projects

There is hardly a group, club, organization, or team in the country today who doesn’t try to better themselves, either individually or as a group, by performing some kind of community service project.  Some organizations such as the Girl and Boy Scouts, the National Honor Society and many fraternal organizations, center themselves around solely around helping the community in which they live.  But beyond the standard food and clothing drives, blood drives, basically any “drive” one can think of, it is not always easy to come up with projects that are inventive enough to keep members interested and still practical enough to do “real” good in the community.  As a member of Alpha Sigma Alpha sorority, I have definitely seen my fair share of philanthropic activity; in honor of our sorority’s Centennial anniversary (2001), my collegiate chapter was one of three out of 75 chapters to take on the task of 100 philanthropics for 100 years.  We were also the only chapter to complete all 100.  I would like to share a few of our projects that elicited the most involvement from our members.

Alphabet/Number books

One of our national philanthropics is the S. June Smith Center in Lancaster, PA.  The Center is a school which helps developmentally challenged children prepare for “regular” school.  It is also a non-profit organization and therefore has to occasionally look to groups such as Alpha Sigma Alpha for aid.  So we gathered kid-friendly magazines, glue, markers, stamps, stickers and anything else we could find and set about making books to help the children learn letters and numbers.  Begin with 36 squares of brightly colored heavy bond construction paper.  The squares can be any size, but remember these will be handled by children approximately aged between three and seven or eight so they shouldn’t probably be much larger than 6x6, or smaller than 4x4.