Since early November Chi Omega has been tabling at Breezeway Union and Washakie Dinning Center, carrying out their philanthropic event by helping Make-A-Wish Foundation through raising donations.
The event is called “Believing at 7220,” is a letter writing campaign. Chi Omega partnered with Make-A-Wish Foundation as well as Macy’s Department Store.
Macy’s Department Store will donate a dollar to Make-A-Wish Foundation for every letter that people write.
“So, we write all the letters, community writes the letters and then we donate it to Macy’s and then Macy’s matches every letter we write and then writes a check of a dollar, to every letter to the make a wish foundation,” Philanthropy Chairman of Chi Omega at UW, Morgan O’Connor said.
Make-A-Wish Foundation is the national non-profit foundation, which works to grant the wishes of the kids age from 2 to 18 who are facing life threatening illnesses.
Nationally, Chi Omega has partnered with Make-A-Wish America since 2001. Chi Omega at the University of Wyoming started this specific event three years ago.
“We actually collect letters for Santa from anyone,” O’Connor said.
Chi Omega is trying to involve all the university communities as well as all of Wyoming. This year not only UW, but also six other Wyoming high schools including, Central High School, Cheyenne, Laramie High School and more, as well as a couple of Colorado schools, are also involved.
“We basically write letters, we try to get the community as involved as we can and is then donated to make a wish foundation,” O’Connor said.
One of last year’s biggest providers, Laramie High School, contributed 15,000 letters and this year they are trying to push it further and want to set a goal of 18,000.
“Last year, we wrote 60,833 letters, so 60,833 dollars were donated to the Make-A-Wish Foundation on our behalf,” O’Connor said. “Our goal is to push what we had last year.”
“I think this event is pretty easy to table for since you are not asking for money monetary donation,” said Sophomore at UW, Amanda Smith. “It is kind of nice and it draws people in.”
Chi Omega will be tabling until Friday afternoon and will open their house on Friday evening from 4 pm to 8 pm to everyone to write letters.
“We will be tabling rest of the week and then our actual event where we open up our house and we just have everyone come over and write letters, listen to music and build the hot chocolate and cake,” O’Connor said.
Bailey Mccoy, junior at UW, has been tabling for this event since her freshmen year said, “I really enjoy tabling. It’s really funny. Students usually write: I wish for an A in all my classes, I want a puppy. Dear Santa, I want to go for a vacation.”
Chi Omega members haven’t come up with a final number of letters.
“We will come up with the final number on Friday,” Smith said.
