From Patricia Fairfield-Artman:

Once again, this semester the CST 315 Strategic Communication class completed their solicitation project w/great and rewarding results!   As always the organizations they chose to support were varied with many choosing to reach out and support their home communities.   I get so excited with the results of this project and want to give you an idea of what they did:

 

          A student recruited other CPR certified students on campus and went into her community and taught CPR to parents of a soccer team (one parent almost lost her son last season).

 

          One student collected over 100 letters to be sent to troops in Iraq and Afghanistan; other collected boxes of toiletries for female soldiers at Walter Reid Hospital; another received over 150 signatures on a peace petition.

 

          One student collected cases of toiletries for Joseph’s House – a facility for homeless male teens after reading about a student who was sleeping in a HP school; another solicited volunteers to baby-sit at a battered women’s shelter.

 

          One student solicited safe toys from local businesses to give to pediatric bone marrow transplant recipients at Duke.  She has been invited to join the NASCAR sponsor team in distributing them.

 

          Boxes of food were collected for the Urban Ministry Pantry food bank

 

          A student organized persuasive strategies for his fraternity and raised $1200 for Relay for Life; and $1000 for an African orphanage.   One method used was to offer taxi service for students partying one weekend (reciprocity)

 

          A student utilized MySpace to help raise awareness and solicit donations for the Heart Association (his girlfriend recently lost her father to heart disease)

 

          A student recruited 55 female students to attend a breast cancer awareness presentation on campus.

This is just a sample of the results of this one time project and a tribute to students’ creativity and commitment to make a difference – much of which starts in their SVL classes.