Promise House
The Otterbein Promise House offers services to help peers flourish including a community café, campus food pantry, referrals to community resources, peer advocacy, volunteer opportunities, and educational workshops.
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WE ARE committed to removing barriers to student success.
WE ARE an engaged community and believe in advancing the public good.
🎓 WE ARE committed to removing barriers to student success.
Established in 2016, Otterbein’s Promise House is a student-led community resource center and food pantry for Otterbein students that builds community to break down socioeconomic barriers to student success.
Started, organized, and staffed by students, Otterbein’s Promise House offers services to help peers flourish — including a community café, campus food pantry, referrals to community resources, peer advocacy, volunteer opportunities, and educational workshops.
Check out more about this important resource students have ensured are a part of the Promise House:
Food
The food pantry provides a place where students can access free, healthy food. Student volunteers sort food, stock the shelves, help shoppers, and answer questions. As Promise House members, students also participate as volunteers in the pantry, coordinate food drives on campus, and offer special food-related programming.
Clothing
The Promise House has a partnership with the Otterbein Thrift Store. Students in need of clothing can stop by the Promise House to receive information about obtaining free or discounted clothing.
Financial Wellness Information
The Promise House works with community and campus partners to host information sessions and workshops for students about budgeting, saving, and other financial advice pertinent to college students.
Referrals
The Promise House provides referrals to on and off campus resources. Student coordinators are trained to enroll other students in free tax preparation, assistance with financial aid, or enrollment in food assistance programs.
Emergency Mini-Grant
Thanks to the generous support of a donor, the Promise House is able to provide emergency mini-grants to Otterbein students. These grants can be used for a variety of needs including car repairs, textbooks, clothing, health expenses etc.
School Supplies & Toiletries
The Promise House stocks school supplies and toiletries/hygiene products for Promise House members.
🧑🤝🧑 WE ARE an engaged community and believe in advancing the public good.
The Promise House is just one of many ways Otterbein students invest in, care about and work to advance a greater good for their fellow students, their campus, and their extended communities.
Organized through Otterbein’s Center for Community Engagement, students regularly give more than 80,000 hours each year in service, research, leadership and engagement with their community.
As a community, Otterbein students, faculty, and staff currently support community engagement in five key areas:
Civic Responsibility
We take citizenship seriously. That’s why student volunteers serve as poll workers, run voter registration drives, and present voter education workshops to schools, churches, and other organizations. Our students bring the national Raise Your Voice and Rock the Vote campaigns to campus. They host town halls and coffee hours to address civic and social justice issues; they talk, then they take action.
Environmental Awareness
We are cultivating a greener future, starting right here at Otterbein. On campus, we encourage sustainable living through recycling programs, environmental awareness, and community clean-ups. Our students work with local organizations to clean and preserve local natural habitats. And we give the fruits of our labor back to the community – straight from the Otterbein University Community Garden! The garden serves as an educational resource for the community and provides produce to a local food bank.
Health
We build healthier communities. Students across campus are addressing the health and wellness needs of our communities through direct service with clinics and organizations. Students may participate in health and wellness education activities, or spend time with senior citizens at a local retirement community. Some of our nursing students even take their skills to clinics as close to home as the Columbus metro area, and as far away as Appalachia, Alaska, Mexico, and Honduras.
Poverty, Hunger and Homelessness
We want to end poverty, hunger, and homelessness. We partner with local soup kitchens and food banks to serve meals, work in food pantries, organize fundraisers and food drives, and even decorate grocery bags to hopefully brighten someone’s day. We also partner with Habitat for Humanity to hammer away at new or old houses constructed by and for lower income families. We use our winter and spring breaks for service, traveling to such places as New Orleans and Appalachia.
Youth Literacy, Education & Development
Our students like to “pass it on.” While Otterbein is giving our students a quality education, our student volunteers in turn help to educate youth in local public schools. Through tutoring, mentoring, and educational programming for children and families, volunteers teach life lessons to at-risk youth. Otterbein students also show youth that a college education is within their reach.
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