Who We Are
The Magnolia Project is a student volunteer organization founded in 2022. Our mission is to repurpose florals from Penn events to give as arrangements to hospital and nursing home patients.
Through arranging and delivering bouquets to patients, we hope to provide:
- Joy and hope to patients
- An opportunity for students to meaningfully connect with patients
- A form of de-stressing for volunteers
- A means of increasing sustainability in our community
What We Do
We work with event coordinators around Penn’s campus to collect flower arrangements in the community that would normally go to waste and instead repurpose and distribute them to hospital patients. We are also hoping to expand our initiatives beyond just simply distributing the flowers!
How to Get Involved
General Volunteer: Everyone can volunteer with us! Sign up for the listserv and check out our Trello page to be notified of volunteering opportunities coming up. Some events may have a cap on the number of volunteers, so sign ups will be first come first serve.
Committee Member: We have three committees to join: Volunteer/Recruitment, Events, and Marketing. Please fill out the application linked on PennClubs in order to be considered for a role on the committee. A description of each committee is as follows:
Volunteer/Recruitment: Members of the volunteer and recruitment committee will assist in recruiting student volunteers for all aspects of the project, but mainly in collecting flowers and distributing them. General volunteer placements are a responsibility of this committee, alongside the recruitment of new general volunteers. Please contact committee chair Luna Sato (lunasato@sas.upenn.edu) if you have any questions!
Events: The main responsibility of the event committee involves contacting event coordinators from whom we can receive flower arrangements, organizing the collection of these arrangements so that they can be repurposed, and distributing the flowers to hospital patients. Members of this committee will be responsible for communicating with coordinators, searching for new opportunities to receive flowers, interacting with hospital staff and patients, and creating flower arrangements. Please contact committee chairs Dhivya Arasappan (dhivaras@sas.upenn.edu) and Fei Jiang (Fei.jiang@pennmedicine.upenn.edu) if you have any questions!
Marketing: The marketing committee is responsible for all things social media and internal communications. Listserv emails, Instagram posts, and any advertisement material will be created by the marketing committee. Please contact committee chair Brigette Fuentes (bfuentes@wharton.upenn.edu) if you have any question s!