Delta Sigma Pi

 

In my first year of college, at Florida Atlantic University, I was a Business Management major, with the plan of focusing on my dream of starting a nonprofit to help public education in Honduras. I wanted to get more involved within my major and this fraternity definitely suited my needs.

 

Delta Sigma Pi is an international co-ed professional business fraternity specifically for business majors. I had the privilege of meeting and becoming a part of quite a diverting group of students, all from different backgrounds, with different goals for their futures, with some of them even who already were in the starting grounds for their dream careers as they finished graduating. One of them owned two franchises of Massage Envy spas and managed them both while going to school, the other started his own t-shirt making business while in his senior year of college, and another marketing student was already working at a major marketing firm in her sophomore year of college. This fraternity is focused on providing its members with a worldwide system of business connections in order to meet your goals and dreams as a business-driven individual.

 

I had the pride of being twice consecutively elected Vice President of Community Service in my school chapter, Zeta Phi. When I held the position, our chapter had the potential of becoming nationally recognized by the fraternity, and our executive board had the goal of earning that recognition through hard work and dedication. This award was based on a point-system and we had to make the brothers excited that we were very close to reaching all the points we needed in order to be nationally recognized. Where I come in is with the community service events. We needed attendance of at least half of our chapter brothers to show up to our community service events, which, in south Florida, where most students commute to school from their homes and maintain jobs at the same time, is not an easy feat. In order to achieve this, I tried very hard to appeal to their humanity and their emotions during our chapter meetings to inspire them that community service isn’t just about giving to those less fortunate, it’s about growing emotionally, humanistically, and learning that our luck of being in the 10% of the world that’s truly well-off isn’t just a number, but a call to arms and an imbedded duty of ours to help the other 90% of the world.

 

My job as Vice President of Community Service was to call local nonprofit representatives and offer our help to them in events they were holding soon. I tried to make the events as diverting as possible in order to expose the chapter brothers and myself to different philanthropies. Our events consisted of volunteering at the finish line of a cancer awareness marathon, doing beach clean-ups, cooking for a homeless shelter, and more. What I loved about my position was that I wasn’t simply earning points to get our deserving chapter a national recognition, but that after every single event, I got feedback from the brothers as to how much they loved volunteering, and how much they learned about the cause we were helping that day. Even I learned with every event we held, and that was my favorite part about holding the position.

 

My absolute favorite event was definitely volunteering to stand at the finish line and cheer Cancer survivors and supporters to the end. Thankfully, and almost selfishly I am blessed to have never had a close friend or family member be diagnosed with or die of cancer, and so I never thought of it much, but after volunteering at the marathon and seeing survivors or supporters cry of happiness, or laugh of happiness, or having any certain reaction because they finished a marathon, was moving. I thought, whatever their purpose was to finishing this marathon, they just accomplished. Maybe a survivor proved to themselves they were healthy enough to run an entire marathon, maybe a supporter had someone die of cancer and they ran it in their deceased friend’s name, or maybe someone simply wanted to support a cause because it’s brought pain to too many people in the world. What I loved to see is that though this world may seem a bit cold and it requires us to be in constant motion, leaving our undeveloped emotions in the past, our community service events proved that humans are truly capable of having righteous and selfless purposes. Being reassured of that brought me meaning to my life and that is why when I’m not giving, I’m not myself. Out of all the things I’ve said are my favorite about community service, this last one is definitely my ultimate favorite one.