Summary Information for College Students GUIDELINES FOR STARTING A COLLEGIATE CHAPTER OF OMEP You and some friends who are majoring in education, child development, social work, psychology, political science, pre-med and other people-oriented fields are interested in child advocacy. Perhaps you want to do something for needy children in your neighborhood and perhaps you are thinking more globally. How about starting a collegiate chapter of OMEP, a world-wide organization devoted to the wellbeing, rights, and education of all children everywhere. How would you begin? OMEP, Whittier College was established as the first collegiate OMEP chapter in October 1996. Its members have created these guidelines to help you establish a chapter on your campus. We view this document as a work in progress, so please send us ideas and suggestions from your experience so we can add them to future editions of the guidelines. You can reach our chapter advisors at the following e-mail addresses: Dr. Judith Wagner at jwagner@whittier.edu and Mrs. Valene Martinez at vmartinez@whittier.edu. You can reach them by phone at (562) 907-4250 or FAX at (562) 907-4960. Guiding Principles: 1. Campus organizations are more likely to attract and maintain active members when they are relevant to students academic interests, in general, and to students course requirements, in particular. 2. Members want information, but, even more, they want to DO SOMETHING for children. Every chapter meeting and every information/awareness session should include an immediate opportunity to take action on behalf of children. More information about these important principles appears below. 1. Gearing Up: FIRST STEPS... a. Read OMEP brochures and membership guidelines. Familiarize yourself with the organization s history and purpose to make sure OMEP is the organization that best matches your group s interests and purposes. This information is available on the following websites: http://www.omep-usa.org. b. Contact the Student Chapters Liaison of the OMEP-USA (US Committee), the Regional Representative for your area, and the membership chair. You can find these names at this website: http://www.omep-usa.org. The Student Chapters Liaison can help you launch your new group. The regional representative will provide information and contacts in your city. The OMEP-USA Membership Chair will want to know how to contact students who are organizing the campus
chapter. c. Contact your student government officers or the Student Services Office at your college or university to learn how to start a new organization on your campus. Who is eligible for membership? Undergraduates only? Graduates and undergraduates? Full-time students only? Full-time and part-time students? Faculty? Alumni? Members of the community? Many campuses have strict membership guidelines for officially sanctioned campus organizations. When and how does a new group apply for official status? anything to apply? If so, how will you raise the money? Does it cost Is money available from student activity funds or student government funds to support exploratory meetings and organizational meetings before the group applies for official status? If not, when and how does a new group apply for funding? What may such funds be used for: On-campus activities? Bringing in speakers? Participating in conferences? Sponsoring service projects in the community? National dues? May the campus chapter charge its members dues in addition to each member s share of the national dues? If so, are there limits? Scholarships? Must a student organization identify a faculty advisor before applying for official status? Must the campus chapter have a minimum number of founding members? Must officers be identified before a new organization can receive official status on your campus? d. Involve others early in the process. Think about faculty members who are interested in child advocacy. Think about other members of the community who might want to help you launch a collegiate chapter. 2. Schedule an Exploratory Meeting: Schedule a meeting with people who share your interest in children s wellbeing around the world. Things to think about: a. Group size: This meeting may lead to the formation of a committee to establish a new campus organization. If so, you ll need a critical mass of people to animate your ideas into action; but you won t want the group so large that communication and meeting times become too challenging. We recommend a group of five to ten people for the exploratory session.
b. Group composition: Think about the nature of your campus and its student body. Would it be better to start with a group of people you already know in your education, child development, or social work program, or does it make more sense to try to get a broader constituency for your new group by inviting students from many disciplines to the exploratory meeting? We ve found interested students in such disciplines as social work, political science, psychology, pre-med, pre-law, sociology, anthropology, and speech pathology. Also think about whether this is the time to involve a couple of faculty members or whether you want to do some of the preliminary work first. (Remember, some faculty members may be willing to give students extra credit for participating in a project like this one or allow students to count these activities toward fieldwork hours or community service requirements.) The more closely OMEP activities relate to students academic interests, in general, and course requirements, in particular, the more likely it is that busy students will participate actively in founding and maintaining the campus chapter. c. Agenda: The purpose of the first meeting is to hook people on the idea and find out who is really interested enough to commit time and energy to help organize the new chapter. If possible, try to have someone or another organization on campus provide pizza or some refreshments for the meeting. Be sure to get names, e-mail addresses, and phone numbers of everyone who attends the first meeting. Every participant, even those who do not jump on the organizational bandwagon, has the potential to become an active member of the chapter. This is the beginning of what may become a significant, long-lasting campus organization, so you ll want to keep a record of this first meeting for historical reasons. (We are so pleased that the students who formed Delta Phi Upsilon at Whittier College kept records of their first meeting many decades ago. The group is now a national honorary society in early childhood education and Whittier remains the Grand Alpha Chapter. When we formed our campus chapter of OMEP, we created a beautiful, registry for founding member signatures.) Remember that the students who called this organizational meeting are several steps ahead of others who attend. If the leaders really want to get others involved, they ll have to do lots of open-minded listening to the ideas of those who have not done as much prep work as they have done. Also, we advise students who call the first meeting to make it clear that all
participants will be eligible for offices and leadership positions. (Newcomers will probably be more interested in helping the group get started if they think they have a shot at an office or leadership role even though they were not in the original small group that called the first meeting.) d. Timeline: Establish a timeline for getting the group officially approved by the institution. (Be sure to follow established institutional guidelines and procedures as discussed in the Gearing Up section above.) e. Responsibilities: Decide who is going to do what before the next meeting. f. Meeting Times: Establish a regular time for future meetings. You may need to meet during lunch or dinner hours to avoid conflicts with students other commitments. (Remember the old adage, If you want to get something done, ask someone who s already very busy. It is probably true that the people who join you in the challenge of forming a new campus organization will already be active members of other groups, so you ll have to be creative in scheduling meeting times that work for everyone.) g. The Founding Committee: We called people who volunteered to help establish the new organization the Founding Committee. Two students assumed the role of Co-chairs of the Founding Committee. 1. Chartering the New Chapter: NEXT STEPS... a. Notify OMEP-USA: If it looks like there s sufficient interest to form and sustain a new chapter, notify OMEP-USA membership chair and Collegiate Chapter Coordinator. See website at http://www.omep-usa.org for names and addresses of current USNC members. The Membership Chair will want information on how to communicate with the new campus chapter. The Membership Chair will also want to work out a plan for staying in touch with collegiate chapter members after they graduate. The Collegiate Chapter Coordinator and student members of the Whittier College chapter will want to help you celebrate the new chapter. They ll send you information on how to create a Founding Member Registry that you ll want to frame and present to the institution to get some publicity for your new group. b. Carefully follow all policies and procedures for establishing new groups on your campus. c. Plan a special meeting to officially charter the new group and to create a Founding Member Registry. If you notify OMEP-USA well in advance of your
chapter s first official meeting, the president will send a letter or telegram to the group, as well as to the institution s President and Dean of Academic Affairs. These little public relations gestures are extremely important if a new group is to succeed on a busy campus. 2. By-laws: Develop your chapter by-laws, or refine the draft by-laws if you were required to submit as part of your campus application process. (Copies of our by-laws are available.) Even though some people may think of writing by-laws as a relatively boring and mundane task, it s important to give Founding Members a voice in writing or finalizing them. Otherwise it will seem as if the Organizing Committee has already made all the important decisions. LAUNCHING THE NEW GROUP 1. By now the Founding Committee will have had several meetings to figure out how to get a new group officially sanctioned on campus, communicate with OMEP-USA, and draft a charter for the group. Hopefully, the charter can still be in draft form so new participants can have input before the document is finalized. We found that interested students who were not part of the Founding Committee were especially interested in charter regulations on how officers would be elected. We interpreted this as a wish by newcomers to have a chance for a leadership position. 2. Before scheduling the first chapter meeting, make sure to build bridges with as many potential members or supporters as possible, on and off campus. a. Contact other campus groups with similar or overlapping interests. You don t want to duplicate their efforts or siphon off their members. At Whittier, we contacted the Child Development Student Advisory Committee, the Psychology Club, the Sociology Club, and the Social Work Club, as well as honorary societies in all social science departments. We asked what activities they were already engaged in that might qualify as child advocacy. We also asked if they had ideas for projects the two groups might work on together. Later on, after our group decided on some activities, we contacted these other groups to see if they wanted to cosponsor and, if not, to promote our events within their organization. b. Find out whether your campus has a master calendar to help coordinate student activities and events. c. Communicate regularly with the Student Government and other campus offices involved with student activities.
d. Send information about the new group to all faculty members. Make personal contact with all faculty members who might be especially interested in child advocacy. e. At Whittier College, we proposed to the Child Development faculty that OMEP meetings could be organized as a one-credit class under the school s experimental learning or service learning category. While this took two years to accomplish, we laid the groundwork before the organization was officially launched. Currently, some OMEP, Whittier College chapter members earn credit for participating in the group and others do not. We have found the for-credit option particularly helpful in attracting freshmen and other first-time participants. After the first semester, we hope participants will be hooked whether they earn credit or not. f. Communicate regularly with administrators, teachers, and parents at your campus laboratory school or daycare center, if you have one. g. Establish contact local child-services agencies and community groups. They can provide speakers and fieldtrip opportunities. They know about local conferences and professional meetings. (And they may have a job openings for your members after they graduate!) h. Establish contact with like-minded students on nearby college campuses. Faculty advisors and other faculty members can help with this. NOTE: At Whittier College, lab school parents and members of the community have been interested in our campus chapter. However, institution regulations limit active membership in campus groups to graduate and undergraduate students and faculty members. Still on our chapter agenda is figuring out a way to involve others in our chapter within the parameters of this institutional guideline. For example, we have considered an associate member category. 3. See if you can find an individual or a group to underwrite the new chapter s group dues. At Whittier, the campus lab school (Broadoaks) pays the groups annual OMEP dues, provides a meeting space and refreshments. In exchange, OMEP members work with the elementary-grade students on a variety of Children- Helping-Children projects. 4. Try to schedule something really pizzazzy for the first meeting such as a fascinating speaker or an appealing project. Not only will this attract more students to the meeting, but also, this approach may lead faculty to offer incentives, such as extra credit, for attending. And equally as important a pizzazzy first meeting will be more likely to attract on-campus and off-campus media attention for your new group.
Ideas for a pizzazzy first meeting: Invite a big-name speaker to address child welfare issues, locally or worldwide. You ll need funding for a big-name speaker. Perhaps some campus group has already made arrangements for such a speaker and you can piggyback by using the same speaker the next day for your event. Organize the first meeting as a kick-off for a child advocacy event that will be likely to attract lots of students. a. At Whittier we launched our first meeting in conjunction with the kickoff for a three-week study tour to Denmark, including the OMEP World Council Meeting. This was part of an academic program to engage students in various faculty research projects, so we proposed a presentation on Children s Ethnic Identity Development for the OMEP Conference. b. At the same time we launched two local projects to appeal to those who could not participate in the study-abroad trip or attend the World Council Meeting. c. Organize a holiday shopping trip for OMEP members and needy children from the community. d. Repair used toys for donation to the local Women s and Children s Shelter and the Residential Program for Mothers and Children. 5. Both at the beginning of this pizzazzy first meeting and at the end, we announced the formation of the first collegiate chapter of OMEP. We invited all in attendance to become charter members and to sign the Founding Member Registry. Almost everyone at the meeting took us up on our invitation. (Since the campus lab school had covered the cost of group membership, charter members did not have to pay anything.) We realized that some of those who signed the Registry would not actually become active chapter members, but at least we had them on our mailing list and could try to engage them at a later time. 6. At this first meeting, hand out drafts of the chapter charter and announce a business meeting to approve the charter and elect officers.
KEEPING THE ORGANIZATION GOING... 1. We have found that many more students are interested in child-advocacy projects than in organizational aspects of the chapter s work. Therefore, we have found it helpful (perhaps even necessary) to separate business meetings from activity meetings. 2. We have found it essential to balance local projects with national or international advocacy efforts. Some chapter members are particularly attracted to advocacy projects in our local community, such as working with Habitat for Humanity, local food drives, and holiday shopping events with needy children. Other members have been especially attracted to activities that also give them hands-on experience in a school setting. For example, several members have been working in the 5 th and 6 th grades at the campus lab school to help children form their own advocacy group and to help these young students with various study projects, such as their recent effort to find out about child labor in Latin America. 3. See the list of Meeting and Project Ideas on the following page. In the social sciences on our campus, there s a heavy emphasis on research at the undergraduate level. Therefore, we ve been especially successful in various efforts to coordinate OMEP and relevant research activities. Meeting and Project Ideas 1. Bring in speakers or sponsor a film series on topics that will attract students and faculty from many disciplines across campus. This will bring campus-wide attention to the new chapter and will introduce the group to students who may be interested in joining. 2. Look for topics that relate to students academic interests and course requirements. For example, the Whittier Chapter sponsored the following speakers in its first year: a. A slide presentation by a social work faculty member on her childhood years in an internment camp for Japanese Americans during World War II. b. A presentation by the director of a residential center for homeless women and children with AIDS. c. A presentation by a community member who has helped to build more than 20 Habitat for Humanity homes. This led to a commitment from chapter members to work on a local Habitat construction project. This was an important project for the new chapter because members were looking for ways to balance concerns for the world s children with activities on behalf of children in our own back yards. d. A video series on early childhood education in various countries.
3. Look for local projects as well as projects on behalf of children in other parts of the world. 4. Look for ways to connect your OMEP chapter with other campus groups and activities. For example, members of the Whittier College chapter have joined facultystudent research teams working on child study projects, including: a. An empirical study on the efficacy of an abbreviated form of an established child interview protocol in forensic (court) settings. b. An empirical study of children s reports on real and fictitious events. c. A theoretical study of the development of children s conceptualizations of human diversity, equality, and rights. d. An empirical study of the salience of nationality, race, culture, ethnicity, and religion in children s freely-expressed self descriptions and friend selections. e. An empirical study of children s cross-race friendships. f. An empirical study of children s conflict resolution strategies in relation to parents concepts of how children should resolve conflicts. g. An empirical study of age and race as factors in children s perceptions of strangers and dangerous strangers. i. A curriculum development project to analyze the impact of children s literature on peace. While only (c) and (i) above relate directly to child development, early education, and advocacy, all projects have given OMEP Whittier College chapter members the opportunity to accompany faculty members to professional meetings where they could attend child advocacy sessions and network with OMEP members (Society for Research in Child Development, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, American Psychological Society, National Association for the Education of Young Children, Public Policy Meetings and Symposiums). 5. Develop a year-long calendar that includes regular meeting times and interesting activities. Activities should include some work on behalf of local children and families and some work on behalf of children in other parts of the world. In its first two years, OMEP Whittier College participated in the following activities: a. Collecting clothing and toys for a local shelter for battered women and children. b. Refurbishing old toys and games donated by the campus demonstration school for use in a local residential center for women and children with AIDS.
c. Creating greeting cards from art provided by children in the campus demonstration school and sell them to raise funds to help chapter members attend OMEP s World Congress in Copenhagen, Denmark. d. Working with students in the campus demonstration school to write letters opposing child labor in specified countries. e. Collecting food and clothing for children in areas damaged by a hurricane. CAMPUS CONNECTIONS AND PUBLIC RELATIONS 1..Connect with campus demonstration or laboratory school, if you have one. 2. Connect with local public schools 3. Connect with other campus groups whose purpose relates to OMEP s. Work together to sponsor events and raise funds. 4. Work with the institution s Communications or Public Relations Department to promote the group on campus and in local media. Be sure to notify these departments when the chapter sponsors events or participates in community service projects. Also be sure members mention their OMEP affiliation whenever their names are printed in connection with their academic accomplishments, presentations at professional meetings, and/or publications. 5. Look for opportunities to present honorary OMEP memberships to institution officials, guest speakers, honorary degree recipients, etc.