H.P.A. Chapter: NYDA

Manhattan, NY

Chapter Fast Facts

• Chapter Organizer: Pam Elise Harris
• Contact: pam@thehpalliance.org
• Website: www.meetup.com/hpa-nyc
• Chapter Type: Community
• Number of Members: 25

Our major accomplishments include:

• working with Warner Bros.to get one of my members into a special screening of the movies, which resulted in her getting into the premiere.
• coming in second in the Splashlife contest with our idea Care of Magical Creatures, where we will be partnering with Darwin Animal Doctors to educate about saving the animals in the Galapagos
• raising over $1,000 for AIDS Walk 2011 with a team of nine people
• increasing our membership size regularly
• surviving as a Chapter for two years in New York. (There is a huge Harry Potter fandom here which means lots of competition. The fact that we’re still here after two years is huge.)

Members of the NYDA at AIDS WALK 2011 where they raised over $1000

An Accio Books Fairy Tale
NYDA has also been fortunate enough to have been given an awesome opportunity by HPA. The main donation site for the Accio Books! book drive was the New Beginnings Charter School in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Because of our close proximity to the school, we were asked to work with the school to build their library. My co-Chapter Organizer and I visited the school for the first time in March (we had so many books stored at her house that it was becoming a fire hazard.) At the time, there were maybe twenty or thirty boxes there not counting what we brought. When we started sorting in May, the number of boxes had tripled.

Later in May, Andrew Slack, Alex Benepe (Chairman, IQA), and a few of their HPA friends came to visit the school for Wizard Literacy Day. Alex along with helpers from the NYU Quidditch team taught the students how to play Quidditch and Andrew led them in story time (from Harry Potter, of course!). That event was the first time we saw the kids who would be enjoying the books in the library. They would be making the same friends and going on the same adventures as we had when we read those stories. That was very rewarding.

Now the library is complete. All the books have been shelved and are being enjoyed by the students. But that’s not the only thing for them to enjoy. The art teacher created the beautiful Imagine Better mural. It incorporates aspects of the book as well as famous quotes. It even used actual pages from the books. It will surely inspire any child to want to read.

Advice from a CO
Along with being a Chapter Organizer, Pam is a member of the HPA’s Chapter Prefects where she helps burgeoning HPA chapters become stronger parts of their own communities. Her biggest piece of advice for chapters?

NYDA members sorting books at the Imagine Better Library

My advice to chapters is to collaborate with each other as much as possible. Whatever you’re planning, chances are someone else has done it before. Find these people and talk to them. A great way to find out what other chapters are up to is Galleon Day. Read the posts. You never know what you might find. Also, check if there are other chapters in your area. You might be able to work together. Remember our best resource is each other.