Building community on campus and beyond

The University of Waterloo United Way campaign ends up being more about just raising money for a great cause. We saw it enhance the great community we already have at the University of Waterloo – we also saw it inspire creativity.
 
Take for example, St. Paul’s University College. They brilliantly conceived a dare challenge for the United Way. Principal Graham Brown, Director of Operations Lindsay Restagno, Manager of Finance & Administration Mike Steinmann and Alumni Relations Officer Stephen Loo agreed to certain dares. Then they placed change jars at the front desk and asked people to vote by placing money in the jar for the person’s dare that you wanted to see completed.
 
Principal Brown won – although I think the real winner of this challenge was the audience who got to see the one-minute Gangnam Style dance routine at the monthly Community Dinner with residents, staff and faculty.
 

 
This was a fantastic idea, and obviously a lot of fun. It was a chance to strengthen the relationships at St. Paul’s, while helping the larger community. Start thinking about some of the fun ideas you could use next year to build community on campus with students, within your department, or even across campus. We have a few ideas in our Volunteer Toolkit, but we’d love to creativity across campus to build an even better toolkit.
 
And really, you don’t even have to wait until next year – many groups on campus run community-building activities throughout the year to raise funds for the United Way.