A*?/ 5" STUDENT LEAFLETS FOR YOUNG WOMENS CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS Committee Work IN Small Associations ELEANOR RICHARDSON Field Student Secretary for Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania a National Board op The Young Womens Christian Associations op the United States op America 600 Lexington Avenue New York 1914 Committee Work The majority of our Student Associations have not had the good fortune to have a resi¬ dent general secretary, and are so far away from large cities that they cannot often avail themselves of outside speakers. It is for these Association members who have to de¬ pend so entirely upon their own ability to make their work strong in college that I am going to try to go into detail^as to definite ways in which we may make our Association a more effective force in college life. We know what we would like to have our Association be—all things to every member, where friends are always enlarging and en¬ riching their friendships, where they can come into touch with the big Christian movements of the world and church while they are separ¬ ated from their own church during four col¬ lege years, and where Jesus Christ may be known better by each member as her own personal friend, to whom she will give her best in service, both at college and after graduation. 1 Good Committee Work. If this is what we want our Association to stand for, our Cabinet girls must be very con¬ scious that every member has something to contribute to the Association, just as much as they are already aware that the Association has something to give to each of them. So, as we consider the work of the different commit¬ tees, let us be very careful to give a definite responsibility to every member of those com¬ mittees. If we are doing good work this year, next year’s work should be even better. What is the aim of every committee in rela¬ tion to next year’s activities? And again, we are pretty sure that when a chairman says that there is not enough work for her com¬ mittee to do to keep her girls busy, there is either something the matter with her ability to lead, or her loyalty to the purpose for which the Young Women’s Christian Asso¬ ciation stands. Being a cabinet member means time, careful thinking, hard work and much prayer. I wish that all of the Associations in this country might take for their working watch¬ word this year, “a definite piece of work for every member.” 2 Meetings Committee. How many girls should be on this commit¬ tee? Just as many as can be kept busy, and no more! One girl will have as her own re¬ sponsibility the special music for the weekly meetings; another will have as hers the secur¬ ing of attractive posters for the bulletin boards to announce these meetings. Let us not think for a minute that when the music mem¬ ber has found the pianist, or the poster mem¬ ber has secured one girl to make a poster for one meeting that month, she has done her work. For there are four posters to be used in that time, and “Special music 7 ’ means a solo one week, a duet another, or the train¬ ing of a chorus, and sometimes the training of a group of girls for a processional, perhaps for the special Easter song service. And the girl who is responsible for the posters must not only prepare one fitting for the Christmas bazaar, but when she hears there is to be a meeting on “India Awakening.” she will be so full of ideas that she will perhaps ask one of her helpers to make a conventional bamboo design for the poster. Two girls such as these who will work not by fits and starts, but steadily, are only “samples” of loyalty to 3 their Association in little ways as month after month goes by. And then, two of the Meetings Committee members can be responsible for the clippings library. What an aid a clippings library is to a small Association in providing material for the leaders of the weekly devotional serv¬ ice! So often a girl will say, “I would lead, if you gave me any material on that subject.” Our committee is responsible for securing the material. Get one of your Baptist girls to give you her home copy of the “Sunday School Times,” and a Presbyterian girl to give you her home copy of the “Christian Endeavor World,” and clip out all of the material that you think might be used some time at some meeting, and put them, according to their sub¬ jects, into different envelopes. One envelope for instance would contain everything relat¬ ing to the subject, “The Stewardship of In¬ fluence”; another envelope would be marked “Reverence: Are we giving it its Rightful Place in College Life?” and still another would hold material for a Christmas service. Year after year the clippings library would grow until we would never be at a loss to give out material to our leaders on any subject which we might have. Another girl would be re¬ sponsible for distributing the hymnals and seeing that the ventilation is cared for during the meeting. These girls, together with the Chairman, come together to plan the meetings. Why not ask the Missionary Committee to be re¬ sponsible for one missionary meeting a month, having half of them on foreign countries, one on biographies, and the rest on subjects dealing with the home land? A five-cent “Missionary Meetings” pamphlet from the Student Volunteer Movement headquarters would be a great help to them in choosing subjects. Then why not ask the Bible Com¬ mittee also to be responsible for one monthly meeting, suggesting to them that they use some text book as their guide, such as Miss Adams’ “Women of Ancient Israel,” or Miss Cutler’s “Out of Doors in the Bible”? Both of these books are full of material for the girls who speak. Once in two months let us have an informational meeting on such subjects as the World’s Student Christian Federation, the Consumers’ League, Miss Jane Adciams and her work at Hull House, the Daily Vaca¬ tion Bible School, Eight Week Clubs, etc.; 5 for certainly our Association ought to help the girls to get in touch with outside social agencies so that they can know their actual sphere of work when they take their positions as teachers or social workers in the communi¬ ties throughout our States. The other meet¬ ings may well deal with subjects which should be especially chosen with reference to our own local college needs. The pamphlet “Sug¬ gested Topics for Religious Meetings” should help you in choosing them. If we have some programme planned out for the whole year’s meetings, we shall be likely to make our meet¬ ings a stronger spiritual force in our lives. In them all let us be sure that we have a strong spirit of prayerful devotion. How long shall our meetings be? With our crowded schedules a short meeting that is to the point will serve our purpose best. Is it fair to ask one girl to speak for twenty or twenty-five minutes, when we, as a Meetings Committee, know how long it will take her to think out carefully what she shall say to help us in that time? Sometimes we can sub¬ divide our general topics so that four girls can speak for five minutes each. I think that is fairer, and besides we are using more of 6 our members in that way. Let me cite to you such a meeting. Take, for instance, “The Stewardship of Influence / 7 which, by the way, a Meetings Committee in one of our Southern colleges prepared. The first girl would speak on “Evil Influence, a Stumbling Block 77 ; the second would speak on “The In¬ fluence of Speech and of Manners 77 ; the third on “The Unconscious Influence of Charac¬ ter 77 ; and the fourth on “The Influence of Outspoken Discipleship . 77 The girl who pre¬ sides at the meeting would end it by summing up the meeting in the last topic. Planning out such a meeting as that, however, takes time and prayer. How can the Meetings Committee meet less than twice a month, if it accepts its share of responsibility? Its members, next to the Cabinet, must be the most consecrated girls in college. Bible Study Committee. The Bible Study Committee must consider the question of time before it proceeds far on its plans. It isn’t fair in the Christian sense, is it, to ask the girl to go to the weekly meet¬ ing, to a Bible study class the next evening, to church on Sunday, Sunday school, and a 7 mission study class that afternoon? There are literary societies, the Athletic Association and German Club, etc., in college, which, if taken away, would make our college life so much the more meagre, and they also take a certain numbed of hours each week. The wise Bible Committee works to have the Association girls do some definite Bible study by themselves, or in groups, and never fails to encourage the habit of “morning watch” on the part of every girl in school. (“The Christian Social Order” is a splendid little pamphlet for daily Bible readings which every Bible Committee should promote.) The wise Bible Committee tries to enroll the mem¬ bership in Sunday school classes, and accord¬ ingly links up the Association members with their own denominations. This very defi¬ nitely helps to solve the question of time and does away with one extra hour. If such co¬ operation with the town Sunday schools is not possible, then the ideal study group in school numbers not more than fifteen, and is led by a student. Wouldn’t it be splendid if there could be such a Bible study group in each corridor of the dormitory and if all their lead¬ ers should have received help beforehand in 8 a normal class led by one of the faculty! If that plan is not possible this year, but is prac¬ ticable, the Bible Committee, through its good planning, might make it possible for the incoming committee to realize this ideal. Let us be sure that the Bible Study Rally at the beginning of the year really is a rally, whether it be for group study in the school or for Sunday school classes. An outside speaker would be a splendid stimulus, fol¬ lowed by one-minute talks by ten girls, who would tell tersely and quickly what they actu¬ ally got out of the classes last year. The Rally, of course, would be followed by the Canvass. And what careful preparation we need for that! I remember when I was in col¬ lege the domineering way in which one girl approached me. I would not have joined for anything, right then. Later, another girl asked me. She told me of the possibilities of Bible study among us girls in such a simple, straight¬ forward and earnest way that I realized that I would be the loser if I did not care to join. Let us study every girl before we approach her, and be very sure of ourselves as well; that is, that we are not approaching her to get her to join a class so that the record of past en- 9 rollments may be broken, but because we want her for her own self to enjoy with us all that studying the Bible will mean. I wish that every committee member, whether she be on the Bible Committee, or the Social, or the Missionary Committee, would do her work because she cares for every girl in the school. The more friends we make the stronger will be our Association life. The Missionary Committee. The Bible study classes may best be held during the first semester. The Missionary Committee will then have ample time to find its leaders among the girls who went to the summer conference last year, or those who are already vitally interested in missionary work, for their classes during the second sem¬ ester. If you can have more than one class, there should be one on a foreign country, one on the homeland, and still another for study¬ ing the problems of social service in the cities and country districts to-day. By dividing the year this way, we will be solving the ques¬ tion of time again, and so we may expect better attendance and better work done in both Bible and mission study. If you are in 10 doubt as to what text books to use, send for “The Mission Study Prospectus/’ which is a free pamphlet which the Student Volunteer Movement furnishes. You will probably want to take up your mission study along the lines suggested by the Commission on Religious Education. Ask your Field Student Secre¬ tary for the detailed plans of that Com¬ mission. Besides arranging for the classes and find¬ ing the leaders, the Missionary Committee should plan such splendid missionary meet¬ ings that they would serve as one of the best means for interesting girls in joining a class. Let me give you a sample of one such meeting. Purchase Mr. Eddy’s book on “India Awak¬ ening,” and let that be the subject of your meeting. One girl might give a brief survey of Indian life and customs; a second would speak on the religion of the Hindus; a third would give a biographical sketch of Pundita Ramabai, and the leader would conclude with the “Future of India, Our Part in It.” Such a meeting would allow only a very superficial glimpse of the country, but it should interest some girls enough to make them want to study it more carefully for eight weeks, when they 11 would really become in some degree, masters in understanding the Indian people. The Missionary Committee should also have charge of the missionary giving in college, and that means very much more than collecting money. It means that they must keep every girl who contributes to the foreign fund of the Association well informed on the work which she is actually helping to support. Occasionally the Committee should present facts about your foreign work at a regular Asso¬ ciation meeting, for the first two or three min¬ utes. You ought to be able to get material for it from your Field Student Secretary, or the Secretary of your own church mission board, as well as through letters from foreign Secretaries or The Association Monthly and the church papers. If one-half of the girls are giving this year, weekly, what will the incoming Missionary Committee take for its aim next year? The Associations which are giving the most to missions are those whose committees take envelopes to each individual contributor regularly one evening each week. These envelopes may be collected at the time, or put in the Association gift box, hanging near the bulletin board for that purpose. I 12 would suggest, too, that when your foreign work is presented at the beginning of the year, you place a printed folder in the hands of every member, one side of which tells briefly about the actual work which you are aiming to care for, and on the other side of which is a pledge which a member may fill in, which will read something like this: “I.promise to give to the support of our .... work.cents per week, payable by the month \ term J Date This pledge can be recalled by notifying the Chairman of the Missionary Committee, who keeps all of these pledges on file. It will be businesslike, and helpful to the girls, as well, in remembering to whose work they contribute. Finally, the ideal Missionary Committee is constituted so that every denomination which is represented to any extent among the students has a representative on it, that is, a Presbyterian girl on the committee would care for the missionary interests of her church, and the Methodist for the Methodist interests, and each one would thus keep in touch with the secretary of her own church board. 13 The Social Committee. The girls on the Social Committee must be full of ideas, and take as their aim that of knowing every girl in college, so that all may be one big family. Besides the occasional joint socials with the Young Men’s Christian Association, there is easily a place for one big frolic for the girls themselves each term. Shall that be in the form of a baby party, or a circus, or a track meet, or a Japanese evening, or a suffrage tea? It might mean a great deal if the Committee should plan occa¬ sionally for a very informal half hour after supper in the parlor, at different times during the month, perhaps not announcing it until supper time, and not even having refreshments, for after all, refreshments are not the greatest part of a social good time. One great big laugh means much more, and the Social Com¬ mittee could do a great deal of good if it could help the girls to laugh together and relax be¬ fore study hour begins. It is not good for a girl’s digestion to get right up from the supper table and go to her room and study! So isn’t that a need to be met by the Social Com¬ mittee, by having some of the girls prepared 14 to tell bright stories, or to do two or three tricks for amusement, those mid-week nights? If there is a need for getting together, the Social Committee, through its ingenuity, must find out how to insure a good time. How can its members do their work well unless they come together to plan out carefully the evening’s program? If the Social Committee could invite a teacher to talk on “Etiquette” around the open fireplace some night, or have another on a similar occasion speak of “Thrift and Efficiency,” and all the plans of the Na¬ tional Commission on Thrift, it would be en- riching another side of our natures that much the more. When the autumn comes, remem¬ ber the sport there is for Association girls in a tramp into the woods and around the camp¬ fire, if you carry a box of marshmallows and a bag of apples under your arm. The Social Committee has a great big work to do, and it needs careful planning and prayer to accom¬ plish its task, just as much as the Religious Meetings or Missionary Committee. Social Service Committee. The Social Service Committee’s work va¬ ries so much in town, city and country commu- 15 nities that each Association has to find its own place of usefulness in the community. It may be that filling Thanksgiving baskets, dressing dolls for poor children at Christmas time, visiting the sick and aged, distributing flowers, reading aloud to shut-ins, or telling stories to little children will be all that it is possible for one Association to do. Some¬ times the Association, through this committee, can provide volunteer workers as club leaders for city Associations; or again, it may be able to carry on educational classes or play hours among the girls in the rural districts. It is for you to find out from the social organiza¬ tions which may exist in your town, what help of yours would be welcome. One thing you may be sure of—there is something that your Association ought to do. Finance Committee. The Finance Committee has as its chairman the Treasurer; in turn the Treasurer has the Finance Committee to help her in her mani¬ fold duties. She gives receipts for all dues, and asks receipts for all paid bills. The other members of the Committee help to collect the dues. They may decide to have a pay- 16 day social for this purpose, letting each class come dressed to represent a different type of girl in the Young Women’s Christian Associa¬ tion—the Freshman, for instance, representing the immigrants, the Sophomores, country girls, the Juniors, the Indian and the Seniors, the women of industry. They all bring their dues with loyalty to the National Associa¬ tion Movement that day. Forty per cent, of their dues they will vote to send on to their Field Committee headquarters (a) for sup¬ port of the supervisory work of the field, which makes possible the visit of their Student Secretary each year; (b) for the National Board, which among the many other things it does for the student Associations provides a summer conference for their delegates; and (c) for the World’s Young Women’s Chris¬ tian Association, of which we are a part, and which sends us literature for the World’s Week of Prayer every fall. This gift of forty per cent, of all dues, all of which should be sent to the Field Office, is distributed by the Field Office to the larger National and World’s Association. That leaves sixty per cent, of the dues for the year’s running expenses, and as the Treasurer and Finance Committee 17 stand responsible for any debt incurred by the Association, each Committee must, at the beginning of the year, hand in to the Finance Committee the estimate of how much money it would like to use for its work. Unless the Finance Committee passes on such an esti¬ mate in advance, each Committee is held re¬ sponsible for meeting its own debt. The Finance Committee is empowered, of course, to cut down the expenses of each Committee as it sees best, to make the books balance in June. The Finance Committee is also respon¬ sible for raising the Conference Fund and this is where its ingenuity is brought to light. It is the work of this committee to raise money just as it is the Social Committee’s work to give socials, so they must provide different means of entertainment other than the free socials, to which admission may be charged. If an Association wants to raise $100 for its Conference Fund, it would be the wisdom of foresight to raise half of it before Christmas! The spring term is always more crowded than we had expected. In raising the Conference Fund every Committee ought to be able to depend in some degree upon the gifts given by delegates whom the Association has sent 18 in past years. It is safer to write letters to those delegates as early as the first of March. Let’s have the Finance Committee members show the whole Association the ethical value of money, both in the way they administer it, and in the devoted and energetic way in which they set about to get it. Membership Committee. The Vice-President is chairman of the Mem¬ bership Committee. Those on this commit¬ tee call on the girls individually as soon as the new girls enter and during the first call tell them of the ideals of the Association and the various forms of work it is doing in college, and also of the work of the National Student Movement and the World’s Student Chris¬ tian Federation, with which the local Asso¬ ciation has affiliation. They invite them to join a week later. The Recognition Service should be used when the girls are voted into Association membership. When the girls have become members, the work of the Mem¬ bership Committee is then only well on its way to completion. They must come to know those girls so well that they will be in 19 a position to advise the Cabinet where the new girls can work best. The Advisory Board. Let us not forget that our advisory officers can be of great help to us if we make them so. The Association is ours and oftentimes our faculty members, in realizing this, wait to be approached and asked to help. I wish they might meet with our Cabinet occasionally, say once every three months, so that we can tell them of plans and receive the benefit of their experience and suggestions, for they were probably members of an Association Cabinet when they were students. We must make the first advance, remembering to invite them to our socials, and letting them know how definitely they may contribute to the Asso¬ ciation. Perhaps you want to know where to send for all of these pamphlets that have been men¬ tioned in our talk together. If you want help along missionary lines of any sort, write to Mr. J. Lovell Murray, Educational Secretary of the Student Volunteer Movement, 600 Lexington Ave., New York City; and for missionary publications, simply to the Student 20 Volunteer Movement at the same address. If you want pamphlets on Association work, or Bible study text books, have your secretary write to the Publication Department, Na¬ tional Board of the Young Women’s Christian Association, 600 Lexington Ave., New York, enclosing stamps or money order for the pur¬ chase in advance. And if any Chairman or President or Secretary wants to know more fully how to develop her work, she should write to her Field Student Secretary, who knows the problems of that college first hand, and who is best able to give the right kind of help. With all this correspondence, the Sec¬ retary, as Chairman of the Association News Committee, will be kept busy, for besides her usual correspondence and distribution of Asso¬ ciation News from the national movement, she will write news items to her Field Secre¬ tary every month or two, which will be inter¬ esting enough to publish in the news column of “The North American Student,” or “The Association Monthly.” You have both of those magazines on the library table, I sup¬ pose, in order to benefit from the failures and strong points of all of the student Associations in our land, as well as to keep in close contact 21 with the Christian womanhood of the world. They also are obtainable from the Publica¬ tion Department, and if ordered together, may be obtained for $1.70, instead of the $1.00 which each of them costs if ordered separately. The Cabinet. The chairman of all the Committees, with the officers of the Association, acting as the executive body for all of the Association girls, will have to pass on questions of general policy which cannot be cared for by any one com¬ mittee. It is they who should answer such questions from your Field Secretary as that about the deepening of the meaning of Asso¬ ciation membership, or who would take up such questions as what social service work the Association should carry out (for certainly an Association which has no outlet will sooner or later become like a stagnant pool), who will recommend to your Field Secretary leaders for the rural Eight Weeks Clubs, who will pass upon the budget drawn up by the Finance Committee, who will keep all the different activities from conflicting with one another in point of time, or in duplicating any work,— 22 and finally, the Cabinet girls are to be the spiritual dynamo for all the rest of the ma¬ chinery. Our Association at large will never be stronger than our Cabinet. “Let us work as if all depended upon us, and pray as if all depended upon God.” \ 23 «