Chapter Activities: Service Projects

Community Service Ideas

Community: Education

  • Sell handmade cards to promote English studies in another country.
  • Hold a writing workshop for middle school children.
  • Help with a community reading campaign.
  • Judge a high school poetry contest.
  • Conduct an exam preparation workshop for high school students.
  • Hold a writing program for middle or high school students and publish their work.
  • Conduct an elementary school book drive.
  • Serve as judges for an elementary school creative writing contest.
  • Conduct a writing contest for local elementary, middle, and high school students.
  • Sponsor a high school team in a community spelling bee.
  • Hold an open house for high school students interested in studying English at the college level.

Community: Children

  • Conduct a children's story hour at a local library.
  • Hold a literary funfest, where children dress as favorite literary characters and talk about their favorite books.
  • Assist at SAFE House for women and children.
  • Conduct an author/illustrator Workshop. Members help the children at the campus day-care program write, illustrate, and publish their own works.
  • Help visiting inner-city children make Christmas ornaments and name posters.
  • Work with local group aiding handicapped children.
  • Read to children and make crafts with them at a local children's hospital.
  • Make Easter baskets for needy children.
  • Conduct a fundraiser for a local children's group.
  • Participate in fundraisers for children, such as Bowl For Kids Sake.
  • Conduct a halloween carnival for disadvantaged local children.
  • Volunteer at a local children's hospital.
  • Hold a "socks and underwear" drive for underprivileged local children.
  • Collect school supplies for needy children.
  • Collect and distribute clothing, shoes and toys for homeless orphans.
  • Collect children's books and donate them to the playroom at a local hospital.
  • Attend events at an orphanage and entertain the children.
  • Host a Halloween literary festival.

Community: Elderly

  • Read to and write letters for the elderly in a nursing care facility.
  • Decorate a nursing care facility or a local shelter for the holidays.
  • Hold a bi-monthly game night at an assisted living center.
  • Collect books for donation to a local retirement center.
  • Make decorations for a local personal care facility. 

Community: Charity

  • Run a Better World Books (BWB) Book Drive. BWB will partner with every chapter to host an on campus book drive to benefit a nonprofit global literacy partner.
  • Participate in a run/walk for a foundation or charity.
  • Conduct an animal shelter fundraiser.
  • Conduct a Books and a Buck fundraiser. Place donation boxes in various university departments, asking for used and unwanted books plus one dollar per book. Send the collections to needy high schools.
  • Participate in a Tales for Tots program. Place donation boxes in area bookstores one month before Christmas. Gift wrap the books and give them to a local organization combating illiteracy.
  • Provide school supply donations for local children's group.
  • Provide stocking stuffers for the Salvation Army.
  • Bake gingerbread houses to donate for an auction benefiting the Family Advocate.
  • Hold a Valentine's Day food drive.
  • Donate money to a literacy group.
  • Hold a book drive for a local correctional facility.
  • Conduct a canned goods drive.
  • Conduct/Participate in campus-wide, alcohol-free drink mix-off; each organization creates a drink, and participants vote for their favorite by putting money in a jar. Proceeds go to a charity chosen by the winning organization. 

Community: Needy

  • Donate food, clothing, toys, books to local shelters or organizations devoted to helping the needy.
  • Participate in blood drives.
  • Walk dogs and donate items to the local Humane society.
  • Assist a local soup kitchen or food pantry.
  • Paint a house for Habitat for Humanity.
  • Become Christmas Angels; sponsor needy children in local Christmas drives.
  • Donate turkeys to a Thanksgiving Turkey Drive.
  • Adopt a family for Christmas.
  • Hold a Train the Trainers resume workshop at the unemployment office.
  • Participate in local health clinics as interpreters for Hispanic patients.
  • Participate in a book drive for books requested by inmates. 

Community: Environmental

  • Conduct or participate in a community clean-up event in such locales as parks, cemeteries, beaches, rivers, roadsides, etc.

Campus Service Ideas

Campus: Academic

  • Tutor, tutor, tutor!
  • Call alumni to raise money for English Department student scholarships.
  • Sponsor award for outstanding freshman writer.
  • Present to a non-senior chapter member a $50 book award credit at the campus bookstore, to be used toward text or class purchases.
  • Hold a panel discussion on graduate school preparation.
  • Hold a panel discussion on how to design a curriculum, the positive and negative aspects of curriculum reform, and how the curriculum affects one's education and life after college.
  • Hold an advising session, sponsored by Sigma Tau Delta and the English Department, to discuss next semester's English course offerings.
  • Throw portfolio parties to help English majors prepare their extensive portfolios; arrange a checklist of necessary components and a professor to provide signatures upon completion.
  • Set up a Meet Your Major booth (featuring pictures of past events, mission statement, and a large collage on the History of the English language) to recruit new English majors.
  • Sponsor and present a $500 scholarship to an English major (from money raised through book sales).
  • Meet with faculty committees to better inform faculty and staff about undergraduate issues.
  • Hold a yard sale to raise funds for a scholarship to commemorate a faculty sponsor.
  • Read material into a tape recorder for blind students on campus.
  • Donate money to buy reference books for the department reading room.

Campus: Aid

  • Assist in writing or editing activities for the campus newspaper.
  • Create a Banned Book library display.
  • Organize a library display, based on the literature from a specific era.
  • Hold a reception for visiting alumni.
  • Adopt a campus building (keep grounds clean, pick up trash in halls, etc.)
  • Serve as ushers at literary events.
  • Participate in all student government events, councils, etc.
  • Act as chauffeurs for visiting poets and authors. 

Campus: Events

  • Plan and conduct an English Faculty Appreciation Breakfast.
  • Network with other student organizations on campus to make more events possible by co-sponsoring them.
  • Fund and award a Faculty Appreciation Award.
  • Staff and pay for treats for a Halloween Carnival.
  • Organize a Writers Roundup, a gathering of local and regional authors, who sell and sign their books and talk to the public.
  • Conduct the first initiation ceremony for a Sigma Kappa Delta chapter at a nearby community college.
  • Assist with the English Department's Fall English Workshop.
  • Organize beginning and end-of-the-year picnics for all English students and faculty.
  • Establish a student lounge for chapter members and department major and minors.
  • Hold a book drive for the library.
  • Provide ushers and host a cast dinner for a visiting Shakespeare troupe.
  • Support university theater players in their performance of Shakespeare plays.
  • Serve as the host chapter for a Sigma Tau Delta convention (both regional and national). Duties include logo design, printing of flyers, programs, folders, surveys, etc.; design and printed tourist guide; design and organize the printing, delivery and onsite sales of convention t-shirts; organize the collection and shipment of books for book drive; order and ship books for the book sale; assist guest speakers; and help during registration.