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“There are a lot of student organizations that have philanthropy as an add-on; they have to have so many hours in it, but I don’t think that there are any organizations like this,” Anthony, a social justice major, said.

STOVE will be involved in several volunteer events next month, including the sponsorship of the 30-Hour Famine and the COOL Conference in Chicago.

The 30-Hour Famine is a two-day event in which students fast to raise money for curbing worldwide starvation. The COOL Conference will be held over spring break for students hoping to improve leadership and activism skills.

“We want to send six students this year to go over spring break, and we’re hoping these students can come back and want to take leadership roles on campus in volunteering,” Korder, also a social justice major, said.

STOVE will begin as an official Hamline organization next fall, once they secure funding from HUSC. However, they conducted a preliminary meeting on Monday to determine interest in the group.

“With this first meeting, we want to see who is interested,” Korder said. “We need to get a roster for who we have and how many people, because you need to have 10 founding members for sure.”

Right now, Korder says STOVE has received interest from 11 people. She added that she’d like to see that number rise to 20 in the next year.

Korder has worked in the Office of Service Learning and Volunteerism since her arrival at Hamline. She says that the OSLV had the concept for such a student-led group last semester, but nobody acted on the idea until winter break. After that, they began brainstorming about what STOVE could potentially become.

“We want to have a solid organization that will be around for years,” she said. “We’ll pick up annual things that we want to do like the Volunteer Fair, COOL Conference, 30-Hour Famine, and make them solid things that always are going to happen on campus so our campus doesn’t lose its grounds in keeping in the community. I don’t think that’s a small goal to keep around.”

Anthony says that getting the word out about STOVE will be vital to the organization’s success.

“We’ve done a lot of publicity with putting posters up and sending out e-mails through CLA,” she said. “Basically we have lists of people who have done things with the OSLV before, who might be willing to join.”