Philanthropy
The fraternity's national philanthropy is bone marrow drives. For a patient with leukemia or any other blood disorder, the odds of finding an appropriate match are already slim; their best chance of finding a matching donor lies within their own ethnic community. Unfortunately, Asian donors make up just a small fraction of the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP). Because of this, every chapter of Lambda Phi Epsilon hosts several bone marrow drives in conjunction with the Asian American Donor Program the former Cammy Lee Leukemia Foundation, and Asians for Miracle Marrow Matches, to inform, educate, and recruit potential marrow donors for the NMDP. By increasing the number of Asian donors in the national registry, Lambda Phi Epsilon hopes to better the chances of Asian patients finding donors that they are compatible with.
Lambda Phi Epsilon recognized bone marrow drives as the national philanthropy when Evan Chen, a brother from Stanford University, was diagnosed with leukemia. The fraternity, along with Evan’s friends, organized a joint effort to find a bone marrow match for Evan. What resulted was the largest bone marrow typing drive in the history of the National Marrow Donor Program and AADP (Asian American Donor Program). In a matter of days, over 2000 people were typed. A match was eventually found for Evan, unfortunately by that time the disease had taken its toll on him and he died in 1996. Since then, chapters across the nation hold annual bone marrow drives to help others find matching bone marrow. In particular, the fraternity seeks out "minority donors because they are the hardest to find."
In addition to hosting bone marrow drives on a national level, individual chapters of Lambda Phi Epsilon participate in local philanthropies including Habitat for Humanity, AIDS walks, beach clean-ups, highway adoptions, and assisting the elderly community. On many occasions, the fraternity has teamed up with other student organizations to help fund raise for various charities. Brothers also participate annually in Relay 4 Life, a 12-hour walk or run marathon, and in 2007, Lambda Phi Epsilon at the University of Toronto raised over $1500 in support of funding cancer research.
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Famous quotes containing the word philanthropy:
“Almost every man we meet requires some civility,—requires to be humored; he has some fame, some talent, some whim of religion or philanthropy in his head that is not to be questioned, and which spoils all conversation with him. But a friend is a sane man who exercises not my ingenuity, but me.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I shall not be forward to think him mistaken in his method who quickest succeeds to liberate the slave. I speak for the slave when I say that I prefer the philanthropy of Captain Brown to that philanthropy which neither shoots me nor liberates me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... the hey-day of a woman’s life is on the shady side of fifty, when the vital forces heretofore expended in other ways are garnered in the brain, when their thoughts and sentiments flow out in broader channels, when philanthropy takes the place of family selfishness, and when from the depths of poverty and suffering the wail of humanity grows as pathetic to their ears as once was the cry of their own children.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)