*Here's an idea to secure funding for a speaker your chapter may not be able to afford*

CSU is excited to be working with WSU, OSU, UCDavis, and Western to get involved with our communities and to learn from world-renowned speakers!

A little history:
Last year, the Colorado State University chapter of VBMA held a holiday canned food drive competition between the first and second year professional veterinary medical students. After a great success, VBMA has decided to take the canned food drive challenge to VBMA’s Western Region. The food drive competition will be among Colorado State University, Washington State University, Oregon State University, University of California Davis, and Western University of Health Sciences. We will be holding the Western Region Canned Food Drive Competition in early November. The school with the greatest weight of total donated food will determine the winner. We envision this as an expanding project that will encompass all five VBMA national regions in future years.

Board members and representatives from the aforementioned schools showed great enthusiasm about this event during VBMA’s annual national meeting at NAVC in Orlando this past January. During these difficult economic times, veterinary students realize more than ever the importance of giving back to community and helping those less fortunate than ourselves. We believe giving back to the community is an important aspect of the veterinary industry. We wish to instill the habits of charitable work and community service within veterinary students in hopes that they will take this mentality with them throughout their careers. For this reason, we organized a school wide canned food drive completion within the VBMA western region. All collected food will be donated to a local food bank in each school’s area. By doing this competition, we hope to give back to the community and to engage in some friendly competition that we believe will help to open the communication lines between schools. We believe this event will assist in establishing the groundwork for future collaboration between VBMA chapters and members as we work together to help our local communities.

As a reward for the school with the greatest amount of canned food donated, AVMA GHLIT has issued $2500 through their educational grants to sponsor a speaker of the winning school’s choice. The speaker should be a veterinary industry player that a student organization alone would usually not be able to afford to bring to their school, such as a Fritz Wood, Rick DeBowes, Gary Burge or Jim Wilson. We hope this will benefit all students at the winning school, as they will have the opportunity to be a part of an educational lecture that falls within the mission of the AVMA GHILT as well as the mission of the VBMA. We believe the VBMA mission coincides with many of the suggested educational grant categories as VBMA strives to assist students with the topics of personal finance and business management, in turn, helping to “protect the financial security of veterinarians and their families.”

What do you think? It's a great way to get students involved and it's relatively simple to put together!