Generocksity hosted their first event of the year Thursday night to support the Boys and Girls Club of London.
Generocksity is a student-run charity that hosts fun parties and events at various bars and clubs in the hopes of getting university and college students excited about giving back to the London community.
Devon Bingham
Co-President of Generocksity, Devon Bingham, explained that students here in London tend to have a reputation of doing nothing to benefit the city so he started the charity here to try and change that.
“There’s a reputation that we come, we see, we go but we don’t really add back. And I think it’s really important that this is our home for four, five years or however long you’re here and you want to make an impact and be able to give back to the community because they’re allowing us to stay here and whether we like it or not, this is our community and we want to be able to work in conjunction with the city as well so we can have a healthy relationship for the next upcoming years.”
In Bingham’s first year here in London he said he really recognized the poverty and homelessness and the huge difference between on-campus and downtown London and so he was eager to do something to make a change.
But partying and drinking to raise money? Bingham explained that the best way to get people to give back is to make it fun and make it something that they may already be doing. He said that university and college students go out all the time so he jumped on the opportunity of hosting parties as a way to raise money. He added that it’s also a way to get students to wake up after a night of drinking feeling good that their small contribution may have made a difference in someone’s life.
Bingham explained that he likes to volunteer at the organization he’s giving back to so that they know how serious he is about supporting them and so he knows that every dollar Generocksity donates will make a difference. He said that they try to support organizations in London that may not be getting a lot of funding elsewhere.
Generocksity Team
“Last year we actually went down and volunteered at the Boys and Girls Club. And honestly, it was so amazing seeing how rambunctious, how excited the kids were and the impact that we made… A huge focus of Generocksity is that for every dollar we donate we want to see a difference. When you donate to UNICEF, it might feel great but you don’t really see where it goes. And initially we were a bit worried about the Boys and Girls Club because they’re a huge organization but after speaking to them specifically about what they could do at the London location and actually going and volunteering, seeing the kids, meeting the staff and seeing what they did, it really impacted us as a whole and we wanted to be able to give back.”
Along with hosting parties and events, Generocksity also takes part in various outreach programs such as tree planting, volunteering and even making care packages and delivering them to homeless people downtown.
Bingham says they will be hosting several more parties this year and they hope to raise between $2500 and $3000 per event for various London organizations.
