This week was the heart of our clothing drive, so we really did what we could to promote the drive and collect as many donations as possible. I took time to go to each of the greek houses where we had set boxes, and remind them of our project and what we were trying to do for the community. I especially promoted the drive at my own sorority house.
I put together a short press release about the project to email out to all of the greek houses. It was great practice writing a press release, and I really took time to follow the format that I had previously learned in my "Writing for Mass Media" class. I went to my sorority advisors and presented the press release I had written, along with a plan to increase the amount of donations we were receiving. My plan was simple. For girls in my sorority, an absence would be removed from their attendance if they brought in 5 or more articles of clothing to donate. I presented the plan to my entire chapter at our chapter meeting that week. Everyone was really excited to help!
On Tuesday I went around to all of the houses to pick up their donations for the week. We had more donations turned in than the previous week, and we were really feeling optimistic about our project! It took a while to collect all the clothes and to sort them out and count them. At my own sorority house it took an especially long time, because I had to record the names of the people who donated, as well as sort and count the donations. I bagged the donations up and loaded them into my car to take to the shelter. It was a really great experience for me to use my problem-solving skills to work out a way to increase the amount of donations we would receive. It was a great feeling to think out the plan, create a press release, present the plan, and then have it turn out to be a great success!
Throughout the week, I had been in constant communication with our boss, Caroline, via email. I was keeping her updated with our efforts, as well as the results of our clothing drive. On Wednesday we had a conference call. I talked with Caroline about how I felt our progress was going, as well as how much help I was or wasn't receiving from the other OU VS intern. Caroline was really supportive, and was really helpful in giving other ideas we could use to get clothing donations.
As a further effort to collect more clothing donations, I called, texted, and emailed more than twenty of my friends that weren't affiliated with a Greek House. On Thursday evening, I went around Norman to collect the donations from my friends. They were all so helpful, and excited to be able to clean out their closets. Driving around to the different houses and apartment complexes took a long time, but it was definitely worth it! I collected almost 300 donations on Thursday night alone!
On Sunday, Shay and I went to the multi-cultural sorority and fraternity meetings to collect donations from them. Since they don't have houses on campus, there was no where for us to set up a collection box. So we emailed them earlier in the week to ask if we could come to their meetings to collect clothes. The email told them about the project, and asked them to bring donations to the upcoming meeting. It was a really great experience to speak to a different group of people and they were really helpful with our project! The different student groups donated almost 400 more articles of clothing just on Sunday night. Our donation numbers were really increasing rapidly!
