Saturday Service: Greek Community Service Work with the Tacoma Rescue Mission

When you think of how college students spend their Saturdays, standing in the community service isn’t often thing that comes to mind. What may be even more surprising to some is how often those students rising early on their days off are “Greek”, or members of fraternities and sororities on campus.

It shouldn’t be however, Greek organizations are some of the most active service groups on campus. Each year, Greek organizations at Puget Sound. This past weekend served as just one example of what kind of service students might do.

Last Saturday, I got the opportunity to go out with 35 members from all different fraternities and sororities from campus (there are 3 fraternities and 4 sororities) and do some yard work and maintenance for the Tacoma Rescue Mission’s Tyler Family Campus.

Here is the group of us just after finishing our work.

The campus fuctions as transitional housing for come of Tacoma’s homeless. As such, the campus directors work to keep the place as neat as possible to help these individuals reestablish a sense of order in such a hectic period of their lives. Responding to this focus, we did whatever was needed to help keep the place in order. This included removing sticks, picking up trash, weeding, and some deep cleaning in some of the facilities’ structures.

Despite the consistent drizzle of rain, it was great to get out and get ur hands dirty helping the Rescue Mission, something we will be back to do again in the near future.

Each year, members fraternities and sororities at Puget Sound contribute thousands of  of community service to the surrounding community. Whether cleaning up the local Puget Creek, helping serve the cities underfed at St. Leo’s food bank, or working to keep transitional housing, Greek houses are constantly involved with a variety of organizations helping to make our city a better place. And not to mention, we have a blast doing it!

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