Freshmen Jon Sutton, Sam Henderson, Alex Lemna and Richard Walsh have proven the common slogan of "uncommon success" to be true with their recent creation of the nonprofit organization Empowering Students.
The inspiration for the program came from Sutton, who got his idea from Building Tomorrow and the program's incentives.
"I really liked their business model of getting students involved with service. I wanted to apply that to a larger concept and that was how Empowering Students was born," Sutton said.
The purpose of Empowering Students is to serve as a facilitator between student-led service groups and charitable organizations. The organization will offer an online venue for discussion and the resources to connect to various services organizations and opportunities.
"I think it's a crime that people can't find somewhere that they want to volunteer for," Sutton said. "If service in our country is to the point where you cannot find one place around where you live that you're interested in helping, either there's not enough information out there or we are drastically failing as a country. I think it is the former, not the latter."
The organization wants to focus on smaller, lesser-known charities in hopes to give service to places where it is needed but not usually received. While eager to gain recognition from DePauw, Empowering Students does not want to be limited to one campus and hopes to gain a large following.
"There are too many good organizations that haven't seen the light of day," Sutton said. "Instead of kids going to some local huge charity, we can find somewhere they're passionate about. And when you're passionate you work so much harder."
Since its creation two months ago, Empowering Students is now a state recognized nonprofit organization that has already begun to make an impact.
The organization's latest projects include a "Puppy Pledge-a-Thon" organized through a Facebook page from which they raised $230 for the Indianapolis Humane Society.
Empowering Students' current project is a collaborative effort with the Bonner Scholar program. They are looking into volunteer fairs at high schools and the possibility of an event with the DePauw alumni association.
Another one of the group's recent projects is its website, which will be fully launched on Jan. 1. The site will feature lists of charities from New York along with eight different Midwestern cities.
"People can go on our site and find any different number of charities affecting any different number of places headquartered in any one of those nine cities and all these charities are going to be places that we've contacted who are interested in help from students," Sutton said.
The charities' contact information will be provided along with links to their blogs. The full site will feature a profile of each charity, including reviews and an opportunity for students to create their own personalized service opportunity. For those unable to volunteer, there will be the opportunity to make donations through the website.
"I hope that students we get on our site can relate to other students directly in case they want to get together and do something," Henderson said.
The group has already gotten a good response from the DePauw community.
"DePauw has a very unique environment that is conducive to not just service, but big ideas and people who want to change things. I'm excited to say [Empowering Students] started at DePauw University. It's a great place to start something. I've found great people who want to help just in my dorm," Sutton said. "Hopefully, we can create a new generation of service based learners. We need to instill this initiative at a young age."