SPH Groups Support Seat Pleasant with Drives

Welcome back. We here at the School of Public Health hope you all had a fantastic holiday break.

Two brand new organizations here at SPH have been busy, helping to make the season brighter for some friends in Seat Pleasant. The University of Maryland Prevention Research Center and the Public Health Engaging and Representing student organization (PHEAR) organized drives to collect goodies to take to families in our neighboring community.

For several weeks, students and faculty members dropped off canned goods and warm clothing in bins around campus. A graduate student working with UMD-PRC says there was a great response from the campus.

There was even an honors student living off-campus who decided to set up her own collection box for the drive. Read on to see what else UMD-PRC graduate assistant, Tanisha Fuller, had to say about the drives and the upcoming Mayor's Clothing Giveaway, scheduled for 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Dec. 5th at the City of Seat Pleasant Town Hall.

Healthy Turtle: A first-time event for two up-and-coming organizations. How did it go?
Tanisha Fuller: I am very pleased with the results of both drives. The generosity of individuals from the School of Public Health is amazing and the drives did much better than what I had expected. I even received donations from an honor student from the University of Maryland who lives in Dorchester; she saw the e-mail and decided to create her own collection bin!

HT: UMD-PRC joined forces with another new group, PHEAR. How did that collaboration work, and will we see more of it?
TF: The working relationship between UMD-PRC and the PHEAR Student Organization was a good one. While the UMD-PRC focused more on communicating with the community and tallying the donations collected, PHEAR focused more on advertising about the drives; the honor student who collected donations on her own was made aware of the drives via an e-mail sent out by one of PHEAR's officers. The working relationship was a good one and I do foresee the UMD-PRC and PHEAR working together on projects in the future.

HT: What exactly happened with the goodies once they left the bins?
TF: I am working directly with the City of Seat Pleasant Mayor's Office to distribute collected articles of clothing to the community. I have already begun delivering canned foods to churches located in the Seat Pleasant community, as a gesture to thank the churches for allowing the UMD-PRC and the City of Seat Pleasant Mayor's Office to place promotional flyers advertising the giveaway in their Sunday bulletins. I will be going out this Saturday to give out the canned foods that were collected this past week while asking the churches if I may once again place flyers advertising the Mayor's Clothing Giveaway in their Sunday bulletins.