The Washington University chapter of Habitat for Humanity has been awarded a $5000 matching grant by State Farm.

It takes a village to raise a child. Few students at Washington University are children, but we depend on resources like the Writing Center and Student Financial Services. Unfortunately, children of the poorer St. Louis school districts lack access to an adequate education.

The Skandalaris Center has enabled University students to make a have a positive impact on the international community, one pair of shorts at a time. A new business run by current University students, Edele, will be selling running shorts and donating a portion of their proceeds to charity.

The Community Service Office and several other groups are hoping to spread peanut butter and jelly to the St. Louis homeless community. PB & Joy, a new student-run food drive, will benefit Operation Food Search, a St. Louis organization that distributes free food to the hungry and poor.

Community service is getting a stylish makeover on campus. Yifan Meng is the first campus director of Styleta, a nationwide non-profit organization that sells designer clothes to benefit women’s initiatives.

Shortly before Jeff LaBoskey arrived at Washington University for his freshman year in Sept. 2001, he was informed that his sister had been diagnosed with a very rare form of cancer known as Ewing’s Sarcoma. Less than a year later, she sadly passed away. When it occurred to LaBoskey that there was, and still is, very little research being done in the field of cancer that caused this tragedy, he decided that he wanted to make a difference and started the Sunbeam Center.

At Wash. U., we seem to love being charitable. Every fraternity and every sorority puts on at least one philanthropic event every year. Each honorary has several community service initiatives, which often involve fundraisers for charity. We come together for Linus, Thurtene and Mr. Wash. U.

Washington University student athletes visited Build-A-Bear Workshop at the Galleria Mall stuffing bears for children in the St. Louis Children’s Hospital.

There are some things that always equate to a good time: good music, a good cause and an open bar. This Friday, Nov. 13, the Linus Foundation will be hosting its semi-annual shindig that will feature all of these things and might just knock your socks off.

Known as SWAP a student-run non-profit collects and donates to charity any unwanted reusable items University students leave in their dorm room over the summer.