Following Homecoming and Rockin’ Against Multiple Sclerosis fundraising efforts, the Greek Life community collaborates one last time each year for Greek Week.
Greek Week hosts events, service projects and competitions to raise money for charities in the mid-Missouri area.
“Greek Week’s main purpose is to serve the mid-Missouri community,” Greek Week adviser Jill Kassel said. “Greek Week is all about what the Greeks can do for the MU campus, for the Greek community as well as for the Columbia and regional Missouri area as a whole.”
Steering committee members choose each year’s theme at a retreat. This year’s theme, “One Mission, One Community, One Greek Week,” was inspired by the One Mizzou initative.
“A member thought it fit in well with the new campaign MU’s been launching to unify campus and embrace diversity,” Greek Week director Blair Thompson said.
The steering committee is working with One Mizzou staff adviser Kelsey Hammond to incorporate aspects of One Mizzou into Greek Week, but the details have not been finalized, Kassel said.
Greek Week director Nikki Bracken said partnering with One Mizzou this year is exciting.
“Although we’re mainly focused on Greek students, we want other people to participate because it’s all for a good cause,” she said.
Greek Week 2012 will support 13 beneficiaries, one for each pairing. Steering committee members choose different ones each year from a pool of applicants. This year, between 40 and 50 local organizations applied, Kassel said.
“We would love to help them all, but we stick to one per grouping so they can receive larger donations,” Bracken said. “Our goal is to select a wide variety of beneficiaries so that we’re impacting different types of causes.”
After accounting for the cost of the events, the donations will be divided evenly among the organizations. Greek Week 2011 raised more than $9,000 for each beneficiary, and the steering committee hopes to raise at least $10,000 for each beneficiary this year, Thompson said.
Each pairing chose a beneficiary Thursday with which to work. During Greeks Giving Back, pairings spend about two weeks working with their assigned beneficiaries and build relationships with them.
“We want to make sure we have lasting relationships with beneficiaries, so we think it’s important to go volunteer with them to learn more about what they do,” Bracken said.
Other annual events include a blood drive, can collection, intramural sports games and Fling. This year’s Fling theme, chosen by the Fling steering committee, is “Famous Couples Around the Globe.”
“We wanted to do something different that didn’t have a set plot, like a storybook theme, and something related to pop culture, and that’s what (the steering committee) came up with,” Thompson said.
The committee made a few other changes to this year’s events. Members decided to eliminate a few smaller events, add Trivia Night and make t-ball the fifth intramural sport.
Greek Week’s letter-writing campaign was also expanded. The community mailed about 18,000 letters to alumni, family members and others explaining the purpose of Greek Week and asking for donations. Many people have donated as a result of the letters, Thompson said.
Greek Week is important because it shows others what MU’s Greek Life community can do, Kassel said.
“I think that it’s something that really brings the community together, and I think that’s really why the steering committee wanted to have that theme of ‘One Mission, One Community, One Greek Week,'” she said. “Greek Week is a really good time when they come together as an entity and show not only the MU community, but the Columbia community and the mid-Missouri area community what they can do as a whole.”
