The University of Mississippi’s Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc. and Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. joined forces to create a week of service to pay it forward to the community.
The week of charitable events kicked off Monday, April 11 and will last until Saturday, April 16, where the community can join in on cleaning a section of Highway 6. The week of service events consisted of ways that the student body and the Oxford community could get involved.
The week of events consisted of an Autism walk, a sleep out for the homeless and a HIV awareness lecture, just to name a few. According to the fraternity and sorority, the events were hand-picked to teach awareness and help learn a sense of humanity.
“We tried to pick events that were most needed for our community,” said William Paine, Phi Beta Sigma member.
The members of Phi Beta Sigma live by three main principles: brotherhood, scholarship and service.
Phi Beta Sigma member, Jaylen Paylen, said that the group tried to exemplify the last principle of service and make it into a whole week. Each day of the week consisted of a different event that focused on a certain need for the community.
Week of Events
Day one of the event consisted of an Alcohol Awareness lecture in which attendees used a drunk driving simulator to learn the effects of driving drunk.
The Autism walk was on Tuesday, where multiple Greek organizations and the student body walked around the campus. The walk was in regards to April being National Autism Awareness Month.
“At the Autism walk we had a good turnout,” Payne said. “There were people who just saw us walking and when they found out why, they joined in.”
Wednesday was a sleep out for the homeless. The event was designed to educate people about the homeless, and to literally sleep outside to raise awareness on the struggles of homeless people, as well as make donations.
Thursday, “Who’s sleeping in my bed” event was centered around gaining awareness on HIV and how to protect oneself from it.
Friday, the Save a Life Pregnancy Center hosted an event to protest for Save a Life, and Saturday will end out the week of events with highway pick up on highway 6 near the Chucky Mullins exit towards Batesville at 9 a.m.
“Both the members of Phi Beta Sigma and Zeta Phi Beta have adopted a piece of the highway,” said Gary Wilson, Phi Beta Sigma member. “There we’re going to come together and clean up the highway.”
With the variety of different events this week provided by the Sigmas and the Zetas, the members hope that all the people that have joined them have learned something new or has made some sort of difference in the community. The service does not stop on Saturday, though.
“There’s so much service we can do in a week; besides the whole service week we still do service throughout the year,” Wilson said. “We just wanted to concrete a week and show that we stood true to one of our principles which is service.”
Jasmyn Brown is an intern for hottytoddy.com and is a student at the Meek School of Journalism and New Media at Ole Miss. Jasmyn can be reached at jkbrown3@go.olemiss.edu.
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