Arrowmont
 

I really wish we had a philanthropy that seemed to be a more noble cause. It is hard to want to make financial contributions to a school for arts and crafts, when other house are helping to cure breast cancer or save children from cancer. I guess I just don't understand why Arrowmont is a very noble philanthropy. OTday I visited the Arrowmont website and clicked on the PI beta Phi members link and then on the Philanthropy program guide. here it has a list of all of these questions like "Why did Arrowmont evolve?" "Why is Arrowmont renowned?" "Why should we care?" These are great questions. These are the kind sof questions I ask myself and my members ask themselves when we do a philanthropy event. The only problem is I don't know the answers. Why is Arrowmont so important? What is it all about really?

Arrowmont started as a settlement school for poor mountain children (see the last Arrow) and has evolved into both the crafts school it is now and our current philanthropy of literacy. If you look at past Arrows, you will see that Pi Phi is making great strides in helping literacy.

Hi welcome to greekchat,

I can see in a way where you are coming from. While I understand the importance of Arrowmont myself it can be hard to tell PNMs this during recruitment. In the past whenever we have talked about arrowmont as our philanthropy to them it does not seem as significant. So we have always gone with literacy as our "philanthropy" during recruitment.

Also, I think to understand the importance of the philanthropy you really have to understand the area in which it is located. This really demonstrates why it was so important at the time. Going to school in southwest VA and having seen a lot of these areas growing up you can see why it was so important to these areas that had nothing until Arrowmont was created. If you go there now, there is a whole strip and city area built up around Arrowmont. We always joke about how its the myrtle beach of the mountains.


Hope this helps a little. :)

Arrowmont started as the Pi Beta Phi Settlement School. For a long time, Pi Beta Phi provided the only public education in that county (the elementary school is still called Pi Beta Phi School). It evolved into an arts school and serves a very important role as an internationally known school of art.... my first time visiting the campus was at the age of 12 with my father who was Chairman of Art Education at the University of Toledo and wanted to see this truly unique art school. It wasn't until well after I'd pledged that I realized that was Arrowmont. The arts may not be as easy to explain as breast cancer as a philanthropy but Arrowmont was started and funded by Pi Phi... it is truly unique among all NPC groups. It is a source of pride to me that Pi Phi had the vision in 1910 to start a philanthopic project (yes, Arrowmont is older than many NPC groups). The mission may have changed (now we are enriching lives through art) but it is in keeping with Pi Beta Phi's commitment to education.

Arrowmont
 

Arrowmont is also a good thing because we are the only sorority to own our own philanthropy-we have our own school. I don't even know if there are any fraternities that have that.

PPL,
KYGAMMAGIRL

:)