Yes, you heard that right, a co-Ed service fraternity. I am an active brother of Alpha Phi Omega, APO for short, and we are not your average frat. For starters, do your typical fraternities and sororities include both male and female members? I didn't think so, with APO we welcome all genders into our brotherhood.
Secondly, we aren't your stereotypical frat that hazes initiates and throws ragers on the weekend. We are service based, which means our entire focus is on serving others to better the community.
Our motto is "Be a leader. Be a friend. Be of service." We focus on leadership, friendship and service (LFS). I pledged in the Fall of 2015 and within less than a year my life has been changed for the better. For starters, simply at my small college alone I had 30+ brothers that I knew and would always be willing to work on service projects together with.
Not only would my brothers always be willing to help with a service project, but I also knew they were someone I could call a friend when I'm walking across campus. One of the great things about APO is that our brotherhood extends far beyond my small northwest Ohio college. If I see someone wearing our letters, whether I'm close to home or on the other side of the world, whether they are college aged, middle-aged, or even beyond, I know they are someone I can talk to welcomingly.
Just within our small chapter alone we have had brothers travel all over the world to do service in Tanzania, Panama, Nicaragua, Cambodia, Peru, and more. The social networking of APO is limitless; you never know who you will meet. Alpha Phi Omega led me to meet so many new wonder people, including my Big, someone who has changed my life for the better. A Big is an older brother of the fraternity who takes a new active, their "Little" under their wing to guide them and help them through life.
My Big, Dava, is an outstanding person who has opened my eyes to the world and not only shown me ways to be of service but she has also been there for every up and down of my first year at school. I never knew I would have met a person who would have such a powerful impact. I could go on and on how I was lucky enough to find the perfect Big but I'll save that for a later day. My point is, joining APO this year has been one of the best decisions I've ever made and I hope anyone who has this opportunity should jump on it. You really do get the best of both worlds with a co-Ed service fraternity; you get the social bonding of your brothers as well as becoming part of a group that serves to make the world a better place, one service project at a time.
