{"id":8552,"date":"2019-12-16T15:55:35","date_gmt":"2019-12-16T15:55:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2019\/12\/20\/furman-students-offer-their-hands-and-hearts-to-community\/"},"modified":"2022-09-07T15:31:19","modified_gmt":"2022-09-07T19:31:19","slug":"furman-students-offer-their-hands-and-hearts-to-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/furman-students-offer-their-hands-and-hearts-to-community\/","title":{"rendered":"Furman students offer their hands and hearts to community"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s the season of giving \u2013 and Furman students are giving back to the Greenville community.<\/p>\n

Working through service organizations, athletic teams, fraternities and other groups, Furman students are improving the lives of children, feeding the hungry and helping Greenville\u2019s nonprofits serve those in need.<\/p>\n

Making new traditions<\/strong><\/p>\n

Furman\u2019s chapter of the service fraternity Alpha Phi Omega has conducted small service projects in the community since its establishment in 2014. But this semester, APO members wanted to do something bigger, said Lauren Holmes \u201921, APO\u2019s vice president of service.<\/p>\n

With $8,000 from the Student Government Association, APO partnered with the international hunger relief fund Rise Against Hunger to pack 23,382 meals in three hours on the Sunday before Thanksgiving. The money paid for the food, cost of transportation to get it to Furman and for packaging materials, Holmes said. The meals were enough to feed 108 children \u00a0in various countries for an entire school year.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Furman APO members pack meal boxes for the holidays.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cWe wanted to do something that had a much bigger impact and could involve many people,\u201d Holmes said. About 50 volunteers took part, including about 35 APO members.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis partnership with Rise Against Hunger allowed APO to strengthen the three pillars of their work: leadership, fellowship and service,\u201d said APO faculty advisor John Kaup. \u201cI am excited to see them expand their community impact (to an international level) and look forward to this becoming an annual tradition.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reading is cool<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jeffrey Fann \u201920 remembers his 10th birthday party \u2013 held on the Furman campus. Two Furman varsity soccer players were part of it, because they\u00a0were running the soccer games the kids were playing in the stadium. \u201cI remember thinking I want to be one of those guys one day,\u201d Fann said.<\/p>\n

Today, he is, and now he\u2019s the one who\u2019s impacting youth in the community.<\/p>\n

Fann, a Furman soccer player who just completed his senior season, was among members of Furman\u2019s men\u2019s soccer and tennis teams who participated in Monaview Elementary\u2019s Men Who Read, Dress For Success program. Men Who Read aims to make reading cool for elementary school boys by emphasizing the importance of literacy and dressing for success.<\/p>\n

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Student-athletes in the men’s soccer and tennis teams promote reading at Monaview Elementary School in Greenville, South Carolina.<\/p><\/div>\n

In addition to reading with the students during a visit to the school in November, the Furman athletes taught the Monaview students how to tie ties, something Fann called an evolutionary step in the students\u2019 transition from childhood to becoming young men.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am privileged to have a chance to be a good influence, have a positive impact and inspire these kids to do the little things right and recognize the dreams they have are achievable,\u201d Fann said.<\/p>\n

Holiday Giving Tree<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the Heller Service Corps\u2019 largest projects is the Holiday Giving Tree, an effort to supply wish list items that nonprofits and agencies in Greenville County must gather to fulfill their missions. Tags with the items hung on five trees stationed throughout campus and at The Woodlands at Furman, a senior living retirement community near campus. Wish list items range from canned cat food for Palacats cat rescue to children\u2019s books for preschools to clothing items for emergency shelters.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t run a homeless shelter if you can\u2019t clothe them or give them blankets,\u201d said Katherine Denney \u201920.<\/p>\n

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Furman University’s Heller Service Corps collects gifts, household products and donations for various community nonprofit organizations.<\/p><\/div>\n

Through the Holiday Giving Tree project, students invite the agencies to campus for a luncheon and present the gifts and cash donations collected.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like kids on Christmas morning,\u201d Denney said about the luncheon. \u201cThere are so many smiles and thank yous. But the smiles and thank yous aren\u2019t the reason we do it. We do it because it\u2019s a way to give back to the organizations that have given so much to Greenville.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s the season of giving \u2013 and Furman students are giving back to the Greenville community. Working through service organizations, athletic teams, fraternities and other groups, Furman students are improving […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":273,"featured_media":18237,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,24,38,27,7,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-administrative","category-athletics","category-greek-life","category-student-life","category-top-four-news-2nd-story","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/273"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}