SERV

Today, the Association of Project Leaders at Olin convened for the first time in over a year! The APL is a group of all the community service project/club leaders at Olin + SERV, and we meet regularly (or we're going to) to keep each other updated, to share ideas on volunteer activities, and to eat apple pie. Today's meeting was awesome! Check out the minutes below:
APL Meeting 4-26-09

Looking for ways to get involved in Needham/Wellesley? Check out this list we compiled from the Needham Volunteer Fair 2009!
Needham Volunteer Opportunities.pdf

Hi everyone!
We're happy to announce that this year's SERV Auction proceeds add up to a grand total of $7461, more than any other SERV Auction to date.
Yes, that means that Kiva Microfunds and SERV will both get $3730.50.

Thanks to everybody who donated and/or purchased items, and thanks to everyone for turning out for the Live Auction today!
It's amazing and really awesome that the Olin community can come together every year to raise this much money for charity!
HERE (Office 2007) is a list of this year's winners for each item! Check out what you won and who won your items! We used full names for the spreadsheet for emailing purposes.
Office 2003 excel file
We will be in the dining hall all next week (at lunch) to collect payments for SERV Auction items.

The payment deadline is Tuesday, December 2nd. Please do not miss this deadline.
There will be serious, and possibly embarrassing, consequences.

If you can't make it to the dining hall, you can give it to anyone on the SERV Board in person, or put it in campus mail to MB305 with a note saying who you are and what you bought.

and now... a SERV Auction 2008 Slideshow!

Hello everyone,
Donation time is over and the SERV Auction Item Packet is finally out!
LIST OF LIVE AUCTION ITEMS! LIVE AUCTION ITEMS
You can download it HERE!
SERV Auction 2008 Epic List of Items.pdf

Some general information:
i. Important Dates
Live Auction: Friday - November 14th 12-1pm
Silent Auction: Monday (Nov. 10th) - Friday (Nov 14th), bidding sheets will be placed on tables in the dining hall all week.
ii. Charity Benefiting from 50% of Auction Proceeds
Kiva Microfunds
iii. How to Properly Use This Document:
In Adobe Acrobat (which is what you're probably using to read this PDF), click on "View Bookmarks" (it's on the left-hand side) and you should see every single donation carefully listed under each Category tree. This took sort of a long time, so TAKE ADVANTAGE OF IT.
iv. Payment Information
Based on advice from previous SERV Board members, we will NOT be collecting any forms of payment on the 14th. Instead, SERV will be collecting money from SERV Auction winners the week after the auction until the Monday after Thanksgiving Break, November 17th - December 1st. We will have a table in the dining hall during lunch on those days. This year, we will also refuse to tolerate late payments! After the deadline of December 1st, all winners who have not yet paid will be subject to 5%/week interest on however much is owed. In addition, you will have the notorious Philip Chung hunting you down.
v. Faculty/Staff Item Drop-off Info
Finally, if you are a faculty or staff member who donated an item to the auction, SERV will be happy to collect and store that item for you (and then hand it off to whoever wins the item). SERV members will be tabling in the dining hall during lunch during the week of the auction to collect items! Sorry students, due to space considerations, you’ll just have to hand off your items to the winner one-on-one. Everyone is encouraged to display samples of the item, or the actual item, next to the silent auction donation form during the week!

The SERV Auction Charity survey is now officially closed, and the final winner, with 41 votes (25%) is...
Kiva Microfunds! (http://www.kiva.org)
Here's the blurb on Kiva from the survey:
Kiva's mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty. Kiva allows microfinance institutions around the world, called "Field Partners", to post profiles of qualified local entrepreneurs on its website. Lenders browse and choose an entrepreneur they wish to fund. Kiva aggregates loan capital from individual lenders and transfers it to the appropriate Field Partners to disburse to the entrepreneur chosen by the lender. As the entrepreneurs repay their loans, the Field Partners remit funds back to Kiva. As the loan is repaid, the Kiva lenders can withdraw their principal or re-loan it to another entrepreneur. Kiva is the first organization to use a peer-to-peer lending (P2P) model to fund micro-entrepreneurs.
What's the Plan?
So the SERV Board's plan is to use 50% of the SERV Auction proceeds and to lend all of it out to entrepreneurs on Kiva's website (www.kiva.org). This means that we will actually be getting the money back, at which time we will lend it out again... and again.. and again.. Obviously, we will need to make decisions on things like how many entrepreneurs we want to lend to, how much money we want to lend to any individual, how we will keep track of all of our loans, etc etc. Since there are clearly passionate individuals who know a lot more about Kiva than we do, we will definitely need your help!
Let us know if you would be interested in helping with making microloans through Kiva, and we'll be sure to contact you after the auction.
Thanks so much to everyone who voted! We were super excited to receive a total of 161 responses from students, faculty, staff and alumni.

This year's fabulous SERV Auction will be held during the week of November 10-14th.
What! The SERV Auction is an annual auction held to benefit a charity selected by popular vote. Auction items are donated by the Olin community and include anything ranging from handmade crafts to bartending lessons. The Auction has two parts - There is a silent auction, where bidding sheets are placed out on tables outside of the dining hall for a week, and the live auction.
When!

• Donation period: October 20th - November 3rd
• Silent Auction: November 10th - November 14th @ 12PM
• Live Auction: November 14th 12PM-1PM

Volunteer at the Zoo Howl, held at the Franklin Park Zoo on October 26th! The event is a trick-or-treating event held from 10am to 3 pm for little kids and volunteers will help out by manning candy booths throughout the zoo.

The SERV website has undergone an extreme makeover! Well... it's probably more comparable to a facelift, since the awesome spirit of SERV is still the same underneath. Anyways, poke around, see how it fits, and if you must, give some feedback(volunteer at olin dot edu). Notes: looks great in firefox and chrome, the menu tabs are a little offset in safari.

It is no coincidence that the very first SERV event of the year is the SERV Kick-off. This is the first time we've done the Kick-off and we hope you'll help us make it a great success and something that is continued in future years! It'll be held August 29th, from 3-5PM (during community service time) in the dining hall, and it's basically an informal way to find out how other people at Olin are involved in community service. We've invited representatives from all of the major service organizations on campus to give a quick blurb about what is they do, and how you can get involved! And then we'll have a questions/mingling time where you can talk to us, to the club leaders, to your friends, and even to yourself! It'll be great.

As we all ruefully wave goodbye to the good times we had this summer, there comes a point when you realize that you can only sigh for so many hours before it becomes slightly ridiculous. And that is when you start thinking about fun ways to get involved with community service this year. That's what SERV is for.