Since joining Pi Beta Phi, planning and participating in philanthropy and service events have been some of my favorite and most cherished memories.
So far this semester Pi Beta Phi has had three service events and one fundraising event for our philanthropy, Read>Lead>Achieve. All three service events went better than I could have ever imagined, and allowed Pi Beta Phi to have a significant and positive effect on the Gainesville community. I learned that when a group of Pi Beta Phi's come together with a goal, we can make a huge impact. For instance, at our sandwich-making event for the homeless, we managed to make over two hundred sandwiches in less than an hour to be distributed across Gainesville. I knew my chapter was full of women ready to serve, but I had never realized the impact we could have until these events.
Pi Beta Phi's philanthropy, Read>Lead>Achieve, holds a special place in my heart. The philanthropy mission is to have 100% child literacy across the united states. As an individual chapter, we aim to help this issue by volunteering at a local elementary school's after-school program and assisting students in complete their homework and read books. Unfortunately, however, Covid-19 has hindered our ability to do so in recent semsters. As a chapter, we still wanted to help in any way possible, so we ran a book and toy drive for the elementary school instead. While this is not comparable to our time in person, it still impacted their lives. Last semester I dropped off over $2000 worth of books and toys. Every single kids face lit up as they immediately started sorting through their new supplies. They all then hand wrote over 50 thank you cards thanking the chapter for our efforts. They were so cute and made all of us melt. Experiences like these have made me more proud than ever before to be a part of Pi Beta Phi and participate in its efforts to serve the Gainesville community.
With Love,
Sam Simpson and Pi Beta Phi