Programming

Alpha Sigma Alpha is committed to fostering a sisterhood that is supportive of mental health.

The Behind Happy Faces curriculum was designed to give collegiate members the tools they need to address their mental health.

The program uses cutting-edge educational videos and lesson plans to enhance emotional development through six lessons:

Understanding Mental Health provides a definition of mental health and discusses the reasons sisters do not seek help for mental health challenges.

Your Mental Health helps members better understand the mental health challenges in their lives, and learn about a spectrum to identify how they are addressing those challenges.

Changing Ineffective Coping explains the differences between effective and ineffective coping and allows members to further examine how they are addressing issues in their lives.

Talk to a Sister helps members learn more about how to approach a sister who needs help.

Before the Breakdown helps members learn tips on what actions to take when someone is suicidal.

Sympathy, Empathy & Compassion provides clear definitions for the differences between the three terms.

Each lesson includes videos, PowerPoint presentations, facilitation guides and handouts and should be coordinated by the chapter’s vice president of membership experience. Vice presidents of membership experience, advisors and region volunteers can access the program materials on MyAΣA.

To facilitate this lesson effectively, it is helpful to have experience or training as a facilitator in other areas of campus life. If you have a member who is or has been a resident assistant, student organization leader, peer advocate or is studying to be a teacher, they could be an excellent facilitator for this program.

Alpha Sigma Alpha believes it is important to empower members to take a stand against sexual assault and to give them the tools they need to speak up and intervene in difficult situations.

The Support & Safety Program provides members with information through chapter workshops to be facilitated by trained volunteers.

The support & safety workshops focus on the following topics:

Healthy relationships

Self-care and consent

Bystander intervention

Alcohol and risk reduction

Each year the chapter should host one workshop that focuses on support & safety topics. There are four workshops the chapter can select to fulfill the chapter programming. Each workshop must be facilitated by a trained volunteer.

The Support & Safety Program is an exclusive member-only program.