CANYON, Texas (KAMR/KCIT) — Students in the West Texas A&M University Attebury Honors program created a social media campaign for Catholic Charities as a service project.

According to Attebury Honors Program Director Dr. Carolyn Baum, around 200 students are in the enriched learning community and have access to special courses, events and learning opportunities.

This year students wanted to incorporate a service activity into the program.

“It’s a great way to teach leadership skills, because the best way to leadership is through service, said Baum. “So, we looked for some programs in the area to work with that really served a large portion of our community. We reached out to Catholic Charities of Amarillo, and we’re able to partner with them and tour their facilities and identify a need that we could help with.”

Catholic Charities is preparing for a giving campaign and increased need for services during the winter months.

To help Catholic Charities receive donations, students decided to create a social media campaign to raise awareness about the services Catholic Charities provides, as well as explain how to donate to the organization.

“They divided their group that’s participating with us into teams, and each team will provide some kind of a small video to promote some aspect of our programming,” said Jeff Gulde Catholic Charities Executive Director. ” Each group is working on a little video that will have some kind of mini fundraiser of their own to help kind of kick things off. We’re really looking forward to what these exceptional students provide for us.”

Attebury honors program student Bethany Van Sleet shared that working with Catholic Charities and creating a marketing campaign has been an eye-opening experience.

“I didn’t even know half the things that they had,” said Van Sleet. “They have the Joseph project, which is all about new parents, it’s providing for them. They have the Hunger Project, which is providing for the elderly and giving them food that they don’t have. Vision, teaching people how to speak English, immigrant programs. It’s so important because it impacts so many people that a lot of the time we don’t even really hear about.”

The social media campaign will go on until Nov. 28.