What are you doing this year for Halloween? Is it similar to your plans last year? Maybe you will play dress up and go to a party you won’t remember on Sunday, let alone in a year. Or maybe you will stay home to pass candy out to the kids continuously interrupting your scary movie marathon. Have you considered helping the people within this community?
This Saturday, there will be a Halloween Can Drive to benefit the SOS Community Crisis Center. Participants will meet at the kiosk (the large cylindrical statue perpetually covered with spray paint) behind Pray-Harrold at 5:45 p.m. in costumes with large pillowcases in hand. Pillowcases that will be overloaded by the time the trick-or-treating is over at 8 p.m. Those students, under the guidance of professor Ulch and professor Horvath, will visit local safe neighborhoods and trick-or-treat for canned and dry foods to donate.
“You would be surprised how many people will bring out handfuls of new foods they just bought not hours before,” prof. Horvath said in a recent interview.
In an appeal to his Math 110 class, prof. Horvath stated that “anyone can give us money to go buy the food ourselves. Anyone could grab that old can of green beans from the cupboard and bring it in to class. But to get students, who are not always viewed in the best light by the community, to donate time to a worthy cause … Man, that’s powerful.”
And it is powerful. Often, students attend a university without having ever contributed to the communities in which they live and attend classes. The neighboring communities have already given so much to EMU (just think of all of those supportive “Welcome Back Students!” signs in September) that it is our turn to give something back.
Founded in 1970 by students at EMU, SOS began as a peer-counseling program. Today, according to sos.org, it is “an agency whose comprehensive services assist families in their move from homelessness to self-sufficiency and permanent, stable housing.”
They provide services like eviction prevention, distribution of emergency food and personal hygiene items, transportation assistance to a homeless shelter, short-term shelter for homeless families and children, and after-school substance abuse prevention programs for homeless children.
With its close ties to EMU, it is easy to see why prof. Ulch was drawn to SOS when he began his charity trick-or-treating many years ago. This is your opportunity to help those families in Washtenaw who could truly use your immediate assistance and it will only take a few hours of your time. You are invited to bring friends, girlfriends, boyfriends, family, coworkers and classmates.
Please, meet at the kiosk at 5:45 p.m. this Halloween. Prof. Horvath claims “it will be hard to miss such a large group of people milling around in costume by Pray-Harrold.”
He suggests volunteers dress appropriately for the weather and wear costumes that are comfortable – nothing too elaborate. Bring a sturdy pillowcase that can withstand the cans that will be dropped into it. Volunteers will visit nearby neighborhoods in groups until 8:00 p.m. and meet at the Tower Inn at 8:15 p.m.
You will have plenty of time after trick-or-treating for this worthy charity to attend a party or curl up on your couch in fright. All you had to do to help your community was donate three hours of your time.
