Formal recruitment help!
 

Our Panhel decided to get rid of the skits we normally do during second rounds of formal recruitment in the fall and replace it with a craft (basically Philanthropy Day). I checked some of the threads in the rush section, but I didn't really see anything that tied into our philanthropy. We want to do something with literacy or Arrowmont, but none of the girls wanted to do a bookmark. One of the chapters is actually making build a bears (Im sure you can guess who!) so we thought a book mark would pale in comparison. However, we are having a hard time coming up with another craft idea.

For those of you who do or did have philanthropy day during recruitment, what craft did you do? We have 40 minutes during the round ane only 1 or 2 minutes for cleanup, so we can't do anything too messy.

Thanks!

Arrowmont has kits designed for the philanthropy day that you are basically making a book. They demo'd them at Convention last year, and passed out samples to any chapter president who wanted it. They may still have some. Check their website directly.

Otherwise, I've seen chapters decorate small bookbags which were later filled with donated books and then given to various children's charities (hospitals/ homeless shelters that focus on women and children/ low income day care). You can buy the canvas bags from Oriental Trader pretty cheaply, and fabric paints in small squeeze tubes isn't messy.

My chapter did several-literacy related projects for our Philanthropy Night. We changed them up from year to year for variety.

We did bookmarks once.

Another time we did the canvas bookbags--which were a big hit with the PNMs I think. We used the puffy fabric paint and pre-cut felt arrow forms the PNMs could glue on.

When I went through recruitment we made ABC blocks for a local pre-school. That was really cool actually. But it was messy... We used paint. Maybe if you could find another way to decorate them?

Before my time I think they made bookplates that were glued to the front inside of any book the chapter donated.

Thanks so much, I told the girls about the bags and they think it is a wonderful idea. Some of the girls liked the blocks too, and others wanted to check out the Arrowmont craft idea.
I really appreciate the help!

My chapter does a craft...this year, we made cut-out alphabet letters & collaged them with pictures starting with that letter (ie D dog). We donated them to the class we read with every week to decorate their classroom.

My chapter actually put together little paper books that we gave to the school we read to for Philanthropy. It was really simple. We had paper and we picked out various Dr. Suess poems/ stories and wrote them in the pages, hole-punched three holes along the binding, and then got ribbon and tied it all together in a bow. It turned out really cute and it wasn't difficult for the time period!