Local Service

The Gentlemen of Omega Delta Phi were founded on the sacraments of Unity, Honesty, Integrity & Leadership. One of our reasons for existence is to serve our community with integrity and servant leadership, while always being faithful in unison. Since our establishment in spring 2005, the gentlemen of Omega Delta Phi at St. Mary’s University have consistently been involved in community service, not only through the Service Learning Center, but also through the San Antonio community. We consistently have representation of our organization at any campus wide service project or event.

Omega Delta Phi also has established its own community service projects or events. Since our establishment we have had an Alcohol Awareness Week during the spring semester, it is held the week prior to spring break. Its goal is to make the community aware of the risks involved with drinking and driving. We also have an annual neighborhood service project entitled “Kick the Clutter”. This program tries to bring organizations together to work on one common goal – to serve our local community/neighbors.  Omega Delta Phi was awarded the RSO 2006 Campus Wide Event of the Year Award due to our first ever Kick the Clutter held spring of 2006. Fall 2006 was witness to the establishment of our third annual service project focused on diabetes. We realized that the demographics of our community are mostly Hispanic and as such we also realized that diabetes ranks high amongst Hispanics; therefore the creation of Diabetes Awareness Week. This weeks goal is to help current diabetics pull through their condition as well as make non diabetics aware of the risks affiliated with diabetes and ways to prevent it.

The gentlemen of Omega Delta Phi are also consistently involved with the entire San Antonio community with participation in Habitat 4 Humanity at least two times each semester. We make regular visits to the Ronald McDonald House and the San Antonio Food Bank. We also help out with Fan Fiesta at the AT&T Center roughly four times a semester as well as other service projects that might come up throughout the year.

Omega Delta Phi has the highest service hours requirement of any organization at St. Mary’s University. Our newest members are required to serve 40 hours a semester and our active members serve 35. Omega Delta Phi realizes that the key to successful servant leadership in our future careers begins with serving our community today.

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National Philanthropy

Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA): Omega Delta Phi has chosen CASA as its national philanthropy partnership. For the San Antonio, TX area, CASA also stands for Child Advocates San Antonio.

Omega Delta Phi strives to initiate and actively participate in long term partnerships that help strengthen each of the fraternity’s 45+ chapters’ connections with its local community. “ODPhi” Brothers will have the opportunity to support their local CASA program through various service and fundraising efforts.

The primary goal of CASA’s partnership with Omega Delta Phi is to assist in recruiting needed volunteers and securing additional financial support for local CASA programs. Omega Delta Phi’s national President Jorge Garcia says that, since the organization was founded in 1987, it has been prided itself on giving back to the community. “We are confident that we will make a real contribution to CASA’s work for abused and neglected children.”

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Young Knights Leadership Academy (YKLA) – A National Social Action/High-school Outreach Program: Omega Delta Phi will adopt an agenda that proactively seeks to create an environment of growth and self-actualization for all the peoples of the world. With the help of Omega Delta Phi to builds leaders and champions of community service while ensuring the attainment of a post-secondary education by instilling YKLA values.

The YKLA is a mentor program in which the members of our organization try to instill our sacraments of Unity, Honest, Integrity & Leadership into high school students to try to encourage them to make positive changes in their lives, including going to college. This program has not officially begun, but we have begun doing the ground work and hopefully will launch this academy in the near future.