Clique Busting Sisterhood Events

[xomanadaxo]

Okay, so I know there are TONS of threads on here that list sisterhood events, but I've looked through about 50 of them and haven't found any that would be good to break sisters out of their cliques for a bit and help them get to know some different sisters.

I'm trying to come up with are some quick sisterhood activities we can do during Spirit Week (12 hour a day recruitment boot camp ) to help sisters really get to know each other. I'm looking for ideas that force sisters outside of their normal group of friends and get them interacting with some new girls. So far the only idea I've found that kind of falls into this category is "Sister Speed Dating" where you have 3 minute conversations with your sisters. I like this idea, but I would love some more tips if you have any!

Disclaimer: If any veteran GC-ers know of a thread I may have missed that covers this, PLEASE let me know! I hate starting yet another sisterhood thread, but I tried searching and didn't have much luck with the specific angle I'm going for.

[knight_shadow]

How about doing some sort of activity and assigning members to a group? Instead of forcing them to speak with EVERYONE, you can put names in a hat or something and pull out groups of (insert number) at random so you get people interacting.

When I went to an IMPACT conference through Greek life/NIC, we were grouped with members of organizations that we didn't interact with on a regular basis and had a blast.

[DeltaBetaBaby]

Any sort of game or contest where you can assign sisters to different teams could work. Then you'd pre-assign the teams to make girls work with someone outside their norm.

The actual task can be anything...build a gingerbread replica of your house, write and perform a funny song about the fraternities on your campus, create a sisterhood collage...you get the idea.

[psusue]

I'm sisterhood chair this semester and I really want to start a sister dates schedule. I just need to find out what days/times people can have lunch and dinner and then rotate schedules so that sisters can all meet and hang out with each other. I want to do groups of four and hopefully from different new member classes. I also want to assign a group "leader" who is responsible for contacting everyone, which will shift from week to week. It will be a voluntary group, but I'm hoping that lots of sisters participate!

[Smile_Awhile]

We did a great activity with a chapter consultant that really worked well for us. Get the chapter in a circle, and get a ball of string/yarn (yarn would probably be easiest). The first individual starts by saying something nice about one of the other sisters- encourage everyone to say something to an individual they may not talk to all the time. Once they say something nice, they toss her the string. The next sister tosses the yarn to another sister (who hasn't had it yet) and says something nice about her. Continue until you cover the entire chapter. The web shows you you're all connected as sisters, and share a bond unknown to anyone else. And, remind sisters how awesome it would be to make the web bigger and incorporate more women- getting them excited for recruitment.

This was a great exercise for my chapter pre-recruitment, and really helped to bond us. It also lead into some great discussion on how we could encourage getting to know each other better, so the entire chapter gets some input on it.

I vaguely remember trying to untangle it to form a circle... but I'm not sure if that's a figment of my imagination or not!

[xomanadaxo]

These are AWESOME ideas, thank you all so much! I contacted my sisters a few nights ago and asked them to send me the names of five sisters they wished they knew better. Unfortunately, the ten or so sisters who have responded so far have listed a lot of the same girls over and over (like any house, we have some sisters who are really outgoing, and some who are a bit more shy and therefore aren't close with as many sisters). I had originally hoped to pair everyone up based on the lists they sent me (not sure how exactly I was going to do that, I hadn't thought it through that much ) and do some activity, but now I'm thinking I may revise my plan. Pulling names out of a hat sounds much easier...I think I've been over-complicating this haha.

I like the idea of doing a pseudo-competitive activity with a randomly assigned sister a lot! It sounds like a really good icebreaker. We actually are doing something like the ball of string activity, but I didn't plan it so I'm not exactly sure how it's going to work. Hopefully it will be just as cool!

I love the idea of doing "sister dates," but I'm not sure how well it would work with my chapter (we're pretty over-programmed already), but I might try it anyway because it's such a cute idea!

Thank you guys so much! If anyone has more ideas, I would love to hear them!!!

[Smile_Awhile]

Oh, another suggestion I've seen going around GC- sister "postsecret". Each sister writes down a secret of her own, and puts it in a box. Each notecard is read aloud by a trust worthy individual who won't guess handwriting. I've always wanted to do it with my chapter.

[FleurGirl]

We did a really funny speed dating type thing where you go around and introduce yourself with three random facts. Then you swap identities with the person whom you just "met". You go around swapping identities for 10 minutes and then come back and introduce yourself to the group with the last identity you had. You learn a lot about people you'd never really talk to, it's silly, funny, and GREAT practice for recruitment convos.

[33girl]

We did something similar to what Smile_Awhile mentioned with the yarn, only we had strips of paper and made a paper chain and everyone said why they were a strong or weak link. That can be a tearjerker one though.

I like the idea of random groups or pairs getting together and maybe making a list of 5 things they all have in common (sorority and academic stuff excluded of course).

The contests can work like crazy or not - it depends on whether you have people who are incapable of doing something "just for fun" and worry more about winning than connecting. You know your chapter better than we do to answer that one.

[nittanygirl]

I like the yarn idea. Even having different team building activities. I was a freshman mentor this summer and we had a retreat day where all of the mentors went out in the woods and had to do team building things. We did a lot of cool activities, and although most were based at the place we went, one thing we did were little games. One being the game where you put an object in the middle while everyone stands on lines (in teams on either side:

|-------------------------------|
|-------------------------------|
|--------------O---------------|
|-------------------------------|
|-------------------------------|
|-------------------------------|

Kind of like that with one object for each team. Vertical lines being the people, O being the objects, horizontal lines are just to represent space.
Every person has a number, the leader/ref calls out a number and that number has to run to the middle and get the object and people start passing it under and over (over the head & between the legs) until it gets back to the original runner who then runs it back to the middle again. If it gets dropped you start over. Once teams get comfortable with each other, you scatter them again.

Any games where you can keep shuffling teams, gets people to work together and in the process get to know each other.

[excelblue]

As a guy, all I have to say is: keep it simple.

What would people normally do in their cliques? Now, take those activities and start randomly assigning sisters to each other.

I'm almost certain that nobody would turn down hangouts at that awesome ice cream place or the opportunity for people to study together and give each other moral support.

Keep it simple, but do it often.

[ASTalumna06]

Originally Posted by Smile_Awhile

Oh, another suggestion I've seen going around GC- sister "postsecret". Each sister writes down a secret of her own, and puts it in a box. Each notecard is read aloud by a trust worthy individual who won't guess handwriting. I've always wanted to do it with my chapter.

I actually used this as the final activity during a recruitment workshop to try and get everyone to open up a little more, and to understand that everyone goes through their own personal struggles or has something goofy/embarrassing/funny to hide. I even wrote a secret of my own. I was amazed at some of the things girls wrote down. It was more eye-opening than I thought it would be, and I think everyone was a little more understanding of their sisters, and in turn, the PNMs during recruitment

[FSUZeta]

you could randomly assign sisters to groups named after your symbols, your founders or something else that is significant to kappa delta. throughout the semester you could hold competitions among the groups, i.e., the group with the largest number of attendees to particular chapter, a social, a sisterhood, having lunch or dinner together, grabbing a coffee, etc. gets "x" number of points. you could also give points for the most creative get-together. near the end of the semester, the points are tallied and the group with the largest number of points wins-a lunch, manicures, t-shirts, whatever.

[LaneSig]

Our faculty did a get-to-know-you activity that everyone liked. One person stands up and says something about themselves: "I'm LaneSig and I am the youngest in my family." Someone who has something in common with that comes over, links arms with me and says, :"I'm Susie. I'm the youngest in my family. I have a crush on Peyton Manning." Someone with a crush on PM comes and links arms, and so on and so on. If 2 people have crushes on PM, then they run to get there and whoever gets there first gets to stay. You keep going until everyone is linked together. (And, no fair saying "I'm Brittany and I'm a KD.")
At the end, with everyone in a circle, it's a great way to visually see how you are all connected/linked together.

[FSUZeta]

i love that activity!