Local Philanthropic Service

2017-2019 Literacy Co-Chairs:  Shannon Ross, IN Delta '88 and Colleen Colvin IN Beta '71

For our second year we committed to a 12 Months of Giving program for our Literacy Projects.

 

  • July | 150 books donated (totaling almost $6,000) each to three deserving teachers for their classroom libraries.  All teach in Indianapolis Public School and two were Pi Beta Phis
  • August | Teamed up with WTTV for their Book Drive.  250 books were donated valued at $2,747.50. All books collected were donated to Indianapolis Public Schools    
  • September | A local "Little Library" was filled with 15 new bookd after their existing ones were stolen; an additional 300 books were donated to IPS #63 totaling more than $2,600
  • October | Annual CAR (Champions Are Readers) program was held in September and October at Greenbriar Elementary.  Our volunteers read with over 120 students in 6 classes. Thank you to the 32 Pi Phis and their 17 friends that participated in the program. In total, 665 books were donated by the club to the students with a retail value greater than $5,978
  • November | Books were collected from our members at our Annual Golden Arrow luncheon and at our November Meeting/Yoga at Saks to donate to The Julian Center
  • December | 7 volunteers over 4 days and 40 hours at the Scholastic Book Sale in Fishers worked for Scholastic vouchers. We then used the vouchers earned to buy more books to continue our tradition of donating to groups in need 
  • March | Indianapolis was selected by the Pi Beta Phi Foundation to host one of the annual 20,000 book distributions. more than 600 volunteer hours were clocked by our Indy Pi Phi sisters and friends and family
  • April | Following the passing of our sister, Pam Gemmer, a memorial gift of $116 was donated to a local school
  • May | A month of replenishing our stock for the next round of donations, six volunteers took a trip to Lebanon, IN and were able to secure 643 books for $1 apiece; volunteers also worked the spring edition of the Scholastic sale to earn vouchers for additional books at their warehouse sale

 

We seek to make as big an impact in Literacy in the Indianapolis area as we can each year.  Let us know if you have an organization in mind that would benefit from our giving or if you would like to participate as one of our literacy volunteers. Volunteers can help as often or infrequently as they like; however, we are grateful to have a network of woment to reach out to for various projects throughout the year.