Our Service Committee selects, plans, and organizes the service projects that our chapter will perform each year. We serve our communities by giving of our time, distributing our monetary funds from fund raising and showing our many talents through baking, crafting, creating, and sewing. Our members are very generous and enjoy doing for others.
Service Projects
Some of our past Service Projects include: A ramp build with SAWs (servants at work), maintaining the flower garden at Griffith Train Depot and the Chapter's bike trail bench area, build with Habitat for Humanity, cooking and serving at local soup kitchens, cleaning animal shelters, Lupus Walk, Veterans Day Quilt of Valor presentation and Christmas Tree decorating for Imagine Griffith.
Volunteer Work
Our volunteer work has included: Griffith Sr/Jr High School (GHS) Drama concession stands, Griffith Community Safety day, Griffith Rock n Rail Fest, Park Full of Art, Northwest Indiana (NWI) Food Bank, Salvation Army Red Kettle Bell Ringers, GHS Track or Treat, Phil's Friends to make cards, tie fleece blankets and care packages for cancer patients, Operation Christmas Child through Samaritan Purse, Disability Prom.
Giving
Some of our Giving includes: Salvation Army Angel Tree program, Toys For Tots, Military, Homeless shelters, women's shelters, supply drive for Griffith Animal Control, Griffith Emergency Fund donations.
Continue on below for more information on some of these projects and events!
Our group is crafty! Our members craft homemade items for numerous organizations in Northwest Indiana and afar. Items made include no-sew tie fleece blankets, crochet edge fleece blankets, snuffle mats for dogs in shelters, special scent blankies for babies in the NeoNatal Intensive Care Unit and greeting cards for Service member's use. Some organizations these items go to are Treasured Friends, Griffith Animal Control, Humane Indiana, Project Linus, Phil's Friends, Powers Health Care-Community Hospital, and Operation Gratitude. We have in the past provided our blankets to Police Department Social Workers, Riley Children's Hospital and Campagna Academy.
Griffith Tri Kappa also does work with our community's veterans organizations and individuals. This includes, but is not limited to, awarding veterans with Quilts of Valor and serving meals at special Veteran's breakfasts.
Through Imagine Griffith's Adopt-a-Spot program, Griffith Tri Kappa maintains a small, but beautiful garden around the Grand Trunk Depot at 201 S Broad St, Griffith, IN. This garden also acts as a certified butterfly waystation to help sustain monarch butterflies as they migrate through North America.
This garden around the Depot was made possible thanks to the Lake County Master Gardeners Association, who partially funded this project.
We also maintain a rest stop on the Erie Lackawanna Trail on the south side of Main St. just off the southwest corner of Main St. & Broad St.
In Griffith, Indiana, Tri Kappa has sponsored the StoryWalk® at Woodland Park and overseen multiple stories for children to walk and read, encouraging early literacy, physical activity, and family time!
Griffith Delta Omega Chapter partners with the Griffith Park Department, the Griffith-Calumet Township Branch of the Lake County Public Library and the Legacy Foundation in bringing Griffith a registered trademark Storywalk®.
A registered trademark, Storywalk® is a children's picture book story displayed, page-by-page, on 15-20 podium stands spaced out in intervals. The Park Department maintains the trail and podiums at Woodland Park in Griffith on Pine Street. The Legacy Foundation provided funding for the project. The library chooses and prepares the monthly stories. And the Tri Kappa girls insert the pages each month. New stories are installed the beginning of each month, March through December in partnership with Raising Readers Tutoring.
StoryWalk® was created in 2007 by Anne Ferguson of Montpelier, VT, in collaboration with former staff member Rachel Senechal, and is a registered service mark of the Kellogg-Hubbard Library.
For the past several years, Griffith Tri Kappa has hosted a table at the larger event of Track or Treat at Griffith Sr/Jr High School. This is an annual fundraising event where local businesses and organizations come together to provide a safe and fun trick or treating experience for kids of all ages. There is a small entry fee and all proceeds go to support Griffith Unified Sports—an important sports program that joins people with and without intellectual disabilities on the same team to promote training and playing together to foster a quick path to friendship and understanding! These funds help the students participate in many different sports and activities and allows the program to expand, offering even more opportunities.
Griffith Tri Kappa donated a drinking fountain that includes a drinking fountain, bottle refill, and pet fountain to the community!
This fountain is located on the bike trail just off the corner of Wiggs and Elm in Griffith, Indiana near Griffith Jr/Sr High School and has become a popular spot for the school's track team to fill up on their runs!