#ShesAHound Campaign - The impact of ND on our Female Hounds

Ever since Oct. 11, 1920, when the Sisters of Charity of St. Louis first arrived in Wilcox, SK, the college’s women have been critical to building what Notre Dame is today. 

The legacy of ND’s enormous impact on the lives of young ladies also continues, and the on-going ‘She’s a Hound’ campaign seeks to ensure it remains in strength long into the future.

“The campaign is two-fold,” says the project’s founder and Hound ’69 Arlene Kennedy.

“One is to get stories from women of Notre Dame so that those stories motivated parents to send their young women to the college. The second part is to raise funds for things like upgrades to Mother Theresa Hall, to ensure that the college girls’ home-away-from-home offers them optimum health and well-being, and to provide the young women at ND financial support in the areas of greatest need, be it with program assistance, tuition assistance, etc.”

The ‘She’s A Hound’ campaign is clearly personal for Kennedy, not only as she’s an alumnus who regularly directs credit for her personal development to the college, but because her granddaughter is a Hound as well.

It is the sense that Notre Dame has so positively impacted generations of young women, like the Kennedys, that ignited the fire to ‘give back’ in Arlene’s heart.

“I went back for my 50th-year reunion,” she says, “and that year my granddaughter started as a first-year Hound.

“I just thought: ‘how can these feelings (of love and appreciation for the school) be so sustainable over 50 years, and how can this school offer so much?’ when I saw almost immediately that my granddaughter was experiencing the same thing. I started thinking that as part of the 100th year celebrations last year, I had to do something to pay it back to this wonderful college.”

While the need for funds to support current and future Hounds of all genders will forever remain important, the core of Arlene’s hope for the project is to provide an avenue for the many incredible female Notre Dame alumni to tell their stories, and for those stories to continue to hold a place of honour in the remarkable tapestry that is the history of the college.

To that end, she plans to compile a book of those experiences, and in the meantime, is hoping that the ‘She’s A Hound’ campaign gains traction as ND enters its second century.

“The crux of it,” she says, “is to raise awareness that ND is a community for all young women who attend and that it is a safe and nurturing one."

“The message has to be strong: that we want women to participate in the celebration of Notre Dame’s 100 years (and its next 100 years). We all have stories to tell, we all have wonderful things to celebrate. There is a common thread there that needs to be acknowledged.”

“If you don’t want to donate, then tell us your story,” she adds.

“We’re on the ground floor of this, and we need traction and participation. It is said that what gets celebrated grows.”

All donations will go directly to the She’s A Hound campaign, and while the project is still in its earliest phases, it has yielded a bounty of incredible stories from remarkable Hounds.

Shes A Hound Campaign Page