First-year College of Law student Scott Wolf has used a simple game to raise big money for local youth living in poverty to summer camp. Scott’s student-run Illini Summer Opportunity Organization hosted the third-annual “Rock, Paper, Scissors” tournament, drawing nearly 2,000 University of Illinois students to the UI Quadrangle on Sunday, October 18 with all proceeds matched by Illinois alumni and utilized to send local underprivileged children to summer camp. The event netted $30,000, good to send 300 local children to summer camp.

The concept for the philanthropy is simple. Students pay a $ 10 entry fee (receiving a participant t-shirt and more than $30 in free food coupons from local restaurants) and square off in a “Rock, Paper, Scissors” showdown, with 64 students moving on to the final rounds to compete for great prizes, including a trip to Acapulco, a large-screen television, free bagels for a year, and an iPod Touch. Scott started this project as an undergraduate student at Illinois with a simple concept: Every participant will sponsor one local child to go to summer camp for a day. Each participant's donation will result in a one day summer camp scholarship for one of the nearly 10,000 children in Champaign County who are currently living below the federal poverty level.  Over the past two years, this event has raised over $50,000 and helped hundreds of local families. Along the way, Illini Summer Opportunity has become the third-largest student-run philanthropy on campus, right behind the more-established Illini Pride and Relay for Life.

The event, held on the South Quadrangle, has attracted national media attention and has raised thousands of dollars to help children in the Champaign-Urbana community. You can read more about the organization at www.isooonline.org.  Scott's work was featured in the Friday, Oct. 16 edition of the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin.