Alumni get together for IU Cares Month
Different ideas, but one mission. As IU Cares Month hits off this April, alumni chapter members from all over the U.S. and several chapters abroad get together in their communities to perform service projects. This year, 25 chapters are offering help for community service.
For the uninitiated, IU Cares Month, now in its second year, is a public awareness and community service campaign sponsored by the IU Alumni Association and its worldwide chapter network. The idea is to expand IU's visibility nationwide along with strengthening chapters.
IUAA's Monroe County Chapter will be collecting shoes for the Samaritan's Feet shoe drive.
While some projects will involve volunteers to assist people working on their homes and yards or a local habitat project, there are other chapters doing publics works at landmarks. In Indonesia, alumni are supporting the efforts of the Wandering Library Project, which takes English language books to underprivileged areas outside Jakarta.
The San Francisco Bay Area IUAA chapter will be involved in vegetative management projects at the Golden Gate National Park rain or shine, tomorrow (April 11) and the Metro New York City chapter, in conjunction with other New York IU chapters, will be participating in Hands On New York on April 25, with a goal of planting more than 20,000 trees in parks, gardens, playgrounds, community centers and schools. In Washington, D.C., alums will be painting and landscaping a school.
For the Seattle chapter, work and fun go along sides. The group will be combining community service of IU Cares with the fun of Little 500 on April 25. They will work with Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance, a bike advocacy and trail building group, on the Seattle Parks Colonnade Offroad bicycle park. "It will be too challenging for most of our alumni group to take on," said Thomas Mueller, one of the alumni from the chapter.
The group was looking for a service project for IU Cares last year with a bicycling theme to go along with the viewing of the April 25 Little 500. Seattle Parks led them to this project.
IUAA's Monroe County Chapter will be collecting shoes for the Samaritan's Feet shoe drive at the College Mall on April 18. This idea originated last year when IU Bloomington played IUPUI in basketball; IUPUI's Coach Ron Hunter has been a major catalyst to the Samaritan's Feet program in the state and beyond (see http://www.iupui.edu/barefoot08). The Monroe County group was involved in collecting shoes before the Hoosiers played the Jaguars, and this year, they are collecting shoes at basketball season's end. To grab attention for this cause, they will bring out the Big Red Shoe that was displayed at the Indiana State Fair the past few years.
"We do need new pairs of shoes for the collection process. We are hoping that while people are in the mall, they'll visit any of the merchants in the mall that sell shoes, purchase some shoes to help them out and help out our great cause," said Mike Mann.
As soon as the campaigns come to an end, the chapters will report their success and IU Cares awards will be given to those projects that are "unique, creative and innovative."
Mueller said the feedback on their project was very positive on all sides, including recognition from IUAA at the summer meeting.
"We are very excited to return to the same park again this year and expect an evenbigger turnout. Although our Seattle weather has been most uncooperative and it does not yet feel anything like spring!"
