Activity University of Florida
	Home Academic Resume Activity Project Video	Florida Alternative Breaks Florida Alternative Breaks (FAB) is a student is a student run service organization that is based in the Center for Leadership and Service in the Division of Student Affairs at the University of Florida. Groups of 12-15 students take week long community service trips during winter and spring break to address different social issues within the United States and internationally. I have been on two FAB trips and loved both of them. The two issues that I participated in were Public Health and Youth Empowerment through Sports. For Public Health, my group and I traveled to Birmingham, Alabama for a week and provided sexual education to grade school students, made safe sex packets, and visited the 1917 Clinic, where we learned about the STI epidemic that was currently affecting the public of Birmingham. Last spring break, my group and I traveled to Raleigh, North Carolina and volunteered at Camp Kanata, a YMCA summer camp for our room and board in the mornings and taught a variety of team-building physical activities at the Wake Forest Boys and Girls Club. It was a wonderful experience and I made life long bonds with many members in my group. FAB is a great way to spend your spring break, I definitely got so much more out of it than I though and would recommend a FAB trip to any undergraduate at the University of Florida.	Eta Sigma Gamma Eta Sigma Gamma is the Health Education Honorary at the University of Florida that focus on the ideals of teaching, service, and research. Some of the activities that I have participated in over the past two semesters include: Student Helmet Awareness Campaign Peaceful Paths Clothes Drive World Aids Day testing and education AHEC Smoking Cessation Teaching Session 1^st Annual 5k Run-benefitted March of Dimes Valentine’s Day Candy Grams T-shirt sales Sex in the Swamp	Camp Boggy Creek I spent the weekend of October 16^th-18^th in Eustis, Florida for the Juvenile Rheumatoid Athritis(JVA) weekend at Camp Boggy Creek. I was a family pal to a wonderful family and one of the daughters had JVA. During that weekend we sang campfire songs, played miniature golf, did archery, rode paddle boats, did arts and crafts in the wood shop, and played an intense game of Pictionary. I was responsible for providing a weekend of FUN to my family and giving the parents a break to sit back and relax the beautiful camp grounds and lake of Camp Boggy Creek. It was a life changing experience and I plan on returning again next fall as I stay in contact with the family and we already have claimed one another.
		Theta Alpha I am actively involved in Theta Alpha, a Christian sorority at UF. I’m involved in the Family Weekend committee, attend prayer nights, sisterhood events and service projects regularly throughout the semester. Our sorority’s philanthropic organization is Desire Streets ministries in New Orleans, Louisiana and was founded by Danny Wuerffel . I will be going on a mission trip to help out his ministry with a small group of girls from Theta Alpha in May. We will be rebuilding homes and provide daily outreach to the community.	Hospital Volunteering Over the past three years, I have volunteered at Shands Hospital, the VA Hospital of Gainesville and St. Joseph’s Hospital in Tampa, Florida. I have volunteered in Pharmacy, Medical Services, Pharmacy Administration, and Interventional Radiology. Each department taught me something new about the health care setting and each one was so different from one another. In interventional radiology, I helped the staff schedule appointments and put together patient records for upcoming procedures and watched procedures such as heart catherizations, CT guided bone marrow biopsy, thyroid biopsies, and angiograms. It was a great learning experience and very interesting. In both areas of pharmacy, I fulfilled duties such as restocked medications, discard expired medications, prepare pharmacy residents application packets for interviews, and observe how IVs are made.	Relay for Life Relay for Life is a national volunteer relay event that celebrates cancer survivors and raises money for the American Cancer Society. I was personally touched by cancer when my grandmother was diagnosed and died from pancreatic cancer nearly three years ago. I have been a team captain of a team for two years and have led fundraising events such as pizza sales, candy sales, car washes and coins for cancer. In all, I have helped raise nearly $6,000 to be donated to the American Cancer Society and will continue to be active in Relay for Life in the future.
	Contact Meredith Keppel: Email: mkleppek@ufl.edu
	Last Updated: April 10, 2010