The Epsilon Psi Chapter at Ursuline College partnered with Cuyahoga County’s Literacy Cooperative to paint and decoupage display pots for Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. We are happy to report the success of our event, which was made possible through the Sigma Tau Delta Chapter Service Project Grant. These pots will be displayed across Cuyahoga County to inform parents and families about the Imagination Library and encourage sign-up and early literacy. This was a project that began through the partnership between our chapter and the Literacy Cooperative during the 2022-2023 academic year. We wanted to give back to our local community and this service project offered an excellent opportunity to give back and promote campus-wide involvement in a community-based project.

We set up our event in the atrium of Ursuline College’s Pilla Student Center for a day, inviting students, faculty, staff, and campus visitors to join our chapter and the Literacy Cooperative in painting pots and recycling damaged picture books by decoupaging the pots with cut-out images and words. Part of our mission in doing this service project was to get the word out about Imagination Library and educate people about the benefits and importance of early literacy. Valentino Zullo, a professor at Ursuline College, mentioned how this event helped him “learn about picture books.”

To advertise our event and draw students, staff, and campus visitors into our event, we set up the Literacy Cooperative’s life-sized cardboard cut-out of Dolly Parton both the day before and during the event. We were able to paint and decoupage 48 pots, which met our goal and was an improvement from the previous iteration of the event during the prior school year. Esther, a student participant, appreciated the event saying, “it’s for a good cause and that makes me happy, and I got to hang out with some fun people, so that’s always a bonus.”

For other chapters looking to emulate our event, we recommend finding your local Imagination Library branch or community-based literacy organizations and reaching out to see what kind of events would be helpful to them for increasing their community outreach.

We are very thankful to Joan Spoerl, Director of Imagination Library at Cuyahoga County’s Literacy Cooperative, her volunteers, Ursuline College’s Women’s Center, and Sigma Tau Delta for helping make this event possible.

Trinity Bernard
Chapter Service Project Grant Recipient, 2024
Epsilon Psi Chapter, Vice President
Ursuline College, Pepper Pike, OH

Chapter Service Project Grants

Application Window: October 21 – November 11, 2024, 4:00 p.m. CT

Sigma Tau Delta’s Chapter Service Project Grants are designed to encourage local chapters to be innovative in developing projects that further the vision and goals of the Society. The Society will award a limited number of grants, for no more than $500 each, to support local chapter activities. Funds may be requested for separate projects or for parts of larger projects, and chapters should explore ways to use Service Project Grants in combination with funds secured from other sources. Funds may be requested for ongoing projects, but there is no guarantee that projects funded during one grant period will receive funding in future grant periods.

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