Northeastern University sorority members volunteer at Yawkee Family Inn

March 15 2011, 11:03am

Today’s guest post is from Elizabeth Bailey, a sophomore English major at Northeastern University in Boston and contributing writer for BostInnovation. She is the Vice President of Scholarship for Sigma Delta Tau and her interests include: law, ballroom dancing, and chess. Follow her on Twitter @EABailes! When I went through sorority recruitment last fall, doing community service did not exactly top my list of things to look forward to. I had already done a ton of it in high school, and I thought to myself, what could possibly be new about volunteering at another library or raising money for another charity? Those were things that I had always enjoyed doing, but I never really got to see the way my work was benefiting others. So why were all of these women telling me about how thrilled they were to be able to do various community service events, whether these were kickball tournaments to raise money for a philanthropy, or just doing a cleanup of an area in Boston? It seemed that I heard the same canned story several times during recruitment, and I was looking for something more. Fast forward through the end of recruitment, Bid Day, and a couple weeks of my New Member program as a future sister of Sigma Delta Tau. With all of the information I was receiving about the sorority and how it operated, I hadn’t thought much about the community service we were all required to do every semester. However, we had just started up a new initiative that would involve sending sisters to hold a “game night” each Wednesday for the residents of the Children’s Hospital Yawkee Family Inn, a temporary home for the families of hospitalized children who have traveled to Boston for its noted medical care. I distinctly remember running into two of the girls from my New Member class as they were coming back from Yawkee and being a little surprised when one of them told me, “You have to go next week! It was one of the best experiences of my life. The kids are precious.” Giving up a Wednesday night to do community service for a couple of hours didn’t seem so daunting anymore! So I signed up for several Wednesdays after that and found exactly what the two had been raving about; playing board games, cooking dinner, and just chatting with the families I met became a weekly vacation from the stress of college life. I’ve made relationships with so many people I never would have met without our initiative to work there. Two young men who were pursuing musical careers were kind enough to sing a sweet duet for my sisters and I as we baked a cake for them and the rest of the Yawkee residents. One week I was even lucky enough to be able to practice my Spanish while talking cultural differences with a woman from Spain, learning about her favorite dishes to cook and her thoughts on the US. Building block towers with the younger children and seeing their excitement whenever we’re there is always a new and incredible experience. Just having the ability to cheer up a single person on a day that probably hasn’t been their best is worth more than words, and the experience brings my sisters together more than Greek letters on sweatshirts. So what makes our involvement with Yawkee Family Inn possible? Dedication, enthusiasm, and organization via OrgSync. Although we just started using OrgSync last fall, we have become accustomed to regularly signing up on our SDT Calendar so that 4-5 sisters devote their Wednesday nights, and now Sunday mornings as well, to service at Yawkee. Shannon Denoia, our Community Service Chair, keeps track of the Calendar each week and makes sure to message sisters to remind them of their commitment the day before. OrgSync makes her job a lot easier because without it, we might still be passing around the old-fashioned signup sheet at Chapter meetings. It’s helped us to operate at very high capacity in all aspects of our sorority; the Calendar visually lays out our busy months, the Message feature allows us to communicate with certain groups within the organization, and the event RSVP button makes signing up for events simple. Although initially it was difficult to completely transition ourselves to OrgSync, however, this semester we’ve been able to clock 110 hours at Yawkee Family Inn, transition from the former Executive Board to the current one, and work with Kappa Sigma to raise $15,000 for Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Boston Medical Center. OrgSync has allowed us to become a very effective organization that constantly benefits our community, and it would be tough to imagine how we managed everything before it! I have been so fortunate to be able to bond with my sisters as we work to better the lives of our fellow Bostonians and visitors to the area like those at Yawkee, and I have found that something more that I was looking for in the stories I heard as just a freshman learning the ropes.