Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts began in 1912 as Settlement School and brought education, economic development, and health care to rural Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

Pi Phi women were instrumental in promoting the academic and industrial enrichment of area children, and the Jennie Nicol Health Center was a model for other mountain health facilities until 1965. In conjunction with the University of Tennessee, Settlement School began giving summer craft workshops which were highly successful. These workshops developed into a year-round program of arts education.

Today Arrowmont is an internationally known Visual Arts complex, boasting a renowned faculty and international student body.

Champions Are Readers targets children in the 3rd grade who are at a crtiical juncture in developing both good reading skills and a life-long love of reading. It is designed to serve as a national/international literacy program and was adapted by the Links to Literacy Committee in 2003.

Pi Phi's Canadian philanthropy provides support for the many branches of the library systems in Whitehorse, Yukon, and Yellowknife, Northwest Territories.

While the Canadian government supplies an adequate budget for the purchase of basic books, there is little available for extras. Philanthropy funds are used to purchase "talking" books and videos in English and Inuit, the native language of the Northwest Territories. Reference books, tapes and other audiovisual equipment have also provided for educational programming. Items purchased by the Arrow in the Arctic funds are often circulated among branch and community libraries.

Local Philanthropy

Not only does Oregon Beta participate in these national philanthropies, we have our own local philanthropy that we raise money for as well. Our local philanthropy is S.M.A.R.T., which stands for Start Making A Reader Today. It is a program dedicated to the literacy needs of children ages kindergarten through third grade. We volunteer in the classrooms each week by reading to the children and also having them read to us. Not only do we volunteer, but we also raise money for the program to purchase new books. In order to do this, we hold a Philanthropy each year in the Spring. In past years we have had Angels in Motion, which was a walk/run held on Mom's Weekend. This year we decided to try something new to get involvement from the students and community.

Katie Allen and Shannon McCabe featured in the Daily Barometer, May 14, 2004

The first annual Pie-Esta took place May 13, 2004 and proved to be a success. We received donations in the form of money and pies for this event. The main attraction was the Pie Fly. We had several faculty, members of the Greek Community, house mothers, and even our own members volunteer to have pie thrown in their face. We also sold slices of pie for $1.00 a plate. We were very happy with the way Pie-Esta turned out and are excited for next year's event.

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