The $2,500 goal will allow us what we need to successfully run the weekend conference, where we can focus all our energy on outreach and recruitment:  

• $1,000 will go toward connecting with real-world organizers that look like our students, affirming the many and diverse identities and priorities.  
• $1,500 will cover the costs for food and refreshments, keeping people engaged and powered up throughout the weekend.

The POWER Retreat is a decade-long tradition of empowering students to use their voices.  Keys to the weekend include building leadership, learning to leverage tools for communication and advocacy, creating coalitions of students across interest groups, and focusing on issues relevant to student life and communities in which students are a part.  Students become adept at identifying issues, advocating for a cause, and creating viable solutions. They also build a coalition of caring students who share their belonging on campus and in their community.  

We are a collective, reflecting the diversity of student groups and leaders.  

Past POWER participants have created the Communiversity Garden, helped make NIU more welcoming to UndocuHuskies, activated the PERIOD Project (supplying free menstrual produces in NIU bathrooms), advocated for Huskie Harvest and the Huskie Food Pantry, and led a campaign for an Indigenous Resource Center on campus.  

We will be successful by contacting organizers across the country as well as POWER graduates from the last decade to donate. May 1 is a significant date in U.S. organizing history and present, and we can leverage that for momentum.