As you’re preparing and planning for the upcoming semester, I wanted to give you an event idea that I’ve seen be very successful. For two years the BASIC group at Monroe Community College has partnered with Campus Ambassadors to put on an event called Hope and Social Justice Day.
This is a collaborative event organized primarily by Campus Ambassadors, but they have done a great job of getting other Christian and secular groups involved as well. Their mission is to convey the message that God cares about social justice, raise awareness of their group, and work with other clubs on campus. The event usually brings in 8-10 organizations like the Ugandan Water Project, Love 146, and others who represent various social justice causes like human trafficking, child prostitution, etc. The organizations set up informational tables, so students and faculty can get to know them better and learn about what they are doing to promote social justice around the world.
Throughout the day there are speakers, musical performances, and giveaways as ways of providing more information and some entertainment. The Campus Ambassadors group at MCC usually raise money or use money from their allotted funds to give away free pizza to the campus. They also make t-shirts for all those involved as volunteers in putting the event together. Some years they organize a Bible study about social justice that they advertise during the event.
The job of contacting different organizations is divvied up between the different Christian clubs who choose to be involved to spread the workload out. It’s always been great seeing the Christian clubs work together and work with other clubs on campus that care about human rights like Amnesty International. If you can get a number of groups on your campus to pull together for something like this it can be a great event that really gets the campus involved!
The director of the Ugandan Water Project, James Harrington, has a lot of experience organizing projects like this and could be a great resource. His email address is: info@ugandanwaterproject.com