2,350
edits
Changes
→Highlights of 2019
For our 2020 celebration of Founders Day, we will hopefully have a larger group of attendance and welcome more alumni who can come to next year's Founders Day! The Zeta Chi Chapter ended the year with their annual Sapphire Ball!
==Highlights of 2020==
The Zeta Chi chapter of Kappa Kappa Gamma has had yet another amazing year, despite the circumstances, showcasing the graciousness and resiliency of our sisterhood. This year, we learned that being sisters is more than weekly meetings or bi-monthly events. We showed up for each other in multiple ways - both virtually and in person. Guiding our newest (33) members that were initiated virtually in the Spring, sending off our graduating seniors even though their time on campus was cut short, and maintaining the bonds of sisterhood throughout the rest of the school year were no small feats. Zeta Chi persevered, got a little creative, and worked our way through to make the best of this year!
[[File:Zeta Chi CH 2020.png|thumb|A Zeta Chi, Marist, chapter event in 2020, before Covid hit and everything went virtual.]]
Jessica Gardinier won the Kay Beasley Martin 2020 Scholarship on behalf of the Kappa Kappa Gamma Foundation in February for excellence in academics. Our chapter was awarded the Rosa Parks Raising the Village Award by REAL Skills Network in Poughkeepsie in February 2020. This award was given to us for our bi-weekly Reading Buddies program and book donations. There is an annual gala held to celebrate the recipients of the Rosa Parks awards, as they all honor community icons. Both the 2020 and former Philanthropy chairs were invited to attend. Kappa Kappa Gamma Zeta Chi was lucky enough to be included!
Zeta Chi was also awarded a Convention award this year. We were a recipient of the Gracious Living Award (Unhoused). Our amazing visit with LC Emma brought us all closer as a chapter. We consistently provide a warm and inviting environment for both sisters and guests both in and outside of campus.Kappa events quickly shifted to virtual events during the mid-spring semester and into the fall.
Virtual events were implemented to ensure everyone’s safety and included but are not limited to, meditation workshops, Netflix parties, virtual trivia, virtual Founder’s Day, and mental health checks with Behind Happy Faces. We made sure that events were accessible to everyone and would be enjoyed by all sisters. Mental health events were our top priority this semester because many of our sisters felt stressed and anxious due to the pandemic. Sisterhood involvement was supported and engagement was increased with trivia nights which allowed sisters to win a Kappa water bottle. Polls and Google Forms were sent out to gauge our chapter’s interests related to events.
[[File:Zeta Chi CH 2020 2.png|thumb|Zeta Chi, Marist, transitioned to virtual events after Covid hit in March 2020.]]
This year we supported the KKG Foundation, RIF, and St. Judes. For the KKG Foundation, we participated in the founders day giving challenge by reaching out to friends,family, and alumni and posting Instagram bingo boards on our stories and we raised $783. For RIF, we partnered with Everrow and did an online fundraiser where people who used our code at their website gave us 10% back to donate to our philanthropy. Through this, we raised $31.60 and we also created more read-aloud videos that were sent to the Poughkeepsie Children’s Homeand Real Skills Poughkeepsie to replace the reading carnival we usually have in-person. For St. Judes, we created Kappa teams to help fundraising in preparation for the Marist event in the spring.
This past semester the DEI committee was able to implement in-person and online learning with our Student Government DEI committee. We were able to let the chapter know about a Black Lives Matter Vigil run by the Student Government where we could take a moment as a community to mourn the lives lost not only over the past year but over the course of many years. Our committee made all of our sisters aware of where they could mail in their absentee ballots for the presidential election this year. We promoted DEI education for our Zeta Chi Chapter through Minerva, and also through our Marist’s Professors. The Student Government held a series of lectures over zoom addressing social justice, our college's history, reconciliation, and healing. We were able to inform our sisters about how Zeta Chi could raise money for a local organization called Nobody Leaves Mid-Hudson. This organization helps people in the Mid-Hudson area with affordable housing, immigrant justice, climate and energy justice, and more civic engagement. Lastly, we made our chapter aware of the MISA petition, which raised awareness for international students who were having issues with winter housing at Marist.
In the future, we hope to permanently implement DEI learning for new member education as well as already initiated members. As a committee, we think our whole chapter could benefit from a sensitivity talk regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion before 2021recruitment. During recruitment, we would like to ask our sisters if they would feel comfortable sharing their pronouns in person or over zoom to encourage potential new members to share their pronouns.
To celebrate the traditions of Founder’s Day while maintaining COVID safety guidelines, we held our sesquicentennial celebration virtually through zoom this year. All active members, alumnae, advisory board members, and district team members were sent an invitation.We opened the ceremony with the virtual version of the Founder’s Day ritual provided by our district specialist. We also had two guest speakers that are Zeta Chi Chapter Alumnae, one of whom is a founding member of our chapter, and the other a former advisory board member.Following this, members who submitted their own “What Kappa Means to Me” shared how Kappa has affected their life and were able to ask questions to the Alumni who spoke to their own experiences. We wrapped up the event with an interactive trivia game that focused on the chapter’s members and the accomplishments we’ve achieved as a whole.
