Carolina H.O.P.E

Helping Our Peers with Encouragement

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Outreach

NOT UPDATED YET FOR 2010***
PSS Cleaning Days

Beginning in fall 2004, Carolina H.O.P.E (in partnership with Carolina Students for Life) began volunteering twice a month on Sunday afternoons to help clean the Durham offices of Pregnancy Support Services, a local crisis pregnancy center. As a result, PSS was able to use money that would have otherwise gone to pay a professional cleaning service to directly benefit the community. PSS is an amazing Christian organization that helps pregnant women with nowhere else to turn. PSS provides important services such as free sonograms, counseling, medical care, baby clothes, and diapers. This is all in the hopes of preserving the life of the unborn and changing individual lives with the hope that comes from the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Right: Hard at work cleaning in the PSS Durham office in spring 2005.

Abstinence Education Presentations

H.O.P.E. also reaches out to high schools and middle schools in the greater community. This spring, I had the opportunity to help with a HOPE presentation on healthy decision-making and abstinence to a ninth-grade class at Durham Academy. This was a wonderful opportunity for me as a college student to interact and share with younger peers about the challenge of pursuing a lifestyle of abstinence in a culture of sexual license. I believe that the strength of HOPE and its presentations on abstinence lies in the opportunities it provides—most importantly, the opportunity for students to ask and answer questions in a discussion about sex that goes beyond both “just be safe” and “just don’t do it.” These approaches both fail to fully engage young women and men who are intended for so much more than either legalism or latex can provide. - Melanie Pace, UNC junior

Our presentations outside of the Carolina community are coordinated by our sponsors, the Student Education Coordinators at Pregnancy Support Services of Chapel Hill and Durham, Bomi Aliquoia <bomi@pregnancysupport.org> and Jen Riddle <jen@pregnancysupport.org>. We have networked, as recently as this summer, with other educators at national and state levels to ensure that our information and techniques are up-to-date. Our two presentations, "Higher HOPE" and "Goal-Centered Decision-Making," focus on abstinence and decision-making respectively. We also offer a faith-based presentation, "God's Game Plan." For more information on these presentations please visit www.thehope4youth.org.

Want to get involved? Contact Jen for more information about participating in an abstinence education presentation!

Baby HOPE Day - Fall and Spring 2005

Baby HOPE Day is an annual event that Carolina HOPE co-ordinates with the support of Carolina Students for Life, trying to help meet the needs of pregnant and parenting UNC students and TA's.

This past spring, Baby HOPE Day was March 30 from 10AM to 2PM in the Student Union Multipurpose Room. People came to "shop" for baby materials such as clothing, bottles, toys, shoes, and diapers. Also available were free Bibles and material on Pregnancy Support Services, Carolina HOPE, and Students for Life. Our campus liason even provided a baby swing and a few other big gifts that were distributed in a drawing at the end of the day. We were told some of the items we gave away were being sent all the way to Vietnam for a student's son and that some items where being used to provide for families in rehab who had recently lost their housing in a fire.

Baby HOPE Day for Fall 2005 was held on Tuesday, November 8th in the Pit and was also a success. Go to our Meetings & Events page for more details about this fall's Baby HOPE Day. Go here and click on the "View Pictures" button for pictures.

Volunteers continue to help make Baby HOPE Day a success by helping plan, advertise, set up, and greet people as they came and went during the day. Thanks also to the staff of PSS for all the baby items, prayers, and encouragement.

HOPE Valentine's Day Square Dance

Carolina HOPE's first annual Valentine's Day Square Dance was held on Sunday, February 13th, 2005 from 9:00-11:00 PM in the Women's Gym. It was quite a success: almost fifty attendees were do-si-doing around the floor by the end of the night.

The dance was intended as a fun Valentine's Day "alternative" and as a fundraiser to support Preganancy Support Services. One investment for the resulting proceeds was the e-Bay purchase of fifty Spanish-language children's books for Latino families.

Right:Members of Carolina HOPE, complete with cowboy hats and leather boots.



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Last update: 23 August 2006