FVHS alumna Dorothy Ngo serves her community through Alpha Phi Omega

Dorothy Ngo (left) and a member of APO’s University of California, Riverside chapter (right) participate in a General Business Meeting. Photo courtesy of Dorothy Ngo.

By Sydnie Sabbarese

After graduating from Fountain Valley High School (FVHS) in 2018, Dorothy Ngo started college at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). During her time as a sophomore in college, she wanted to be able to give back to the community as she had done in high school through community service clubs. 

“When I was in high school, I was very involved in community service,” Ngo said. “[It] was a large part of my high school experience, and I wanted to find that similar community in college.”

She found an opportunity to do this once again through the community service-focused fraternity Alpha Phi Omega (APO). The fraternity, which promotes leadership, friendship and service as their core values, created a welcoming environment for Ngo and she had the opportunity to help others as she had during her time in high school. 

During her second year of college, and her first involved with APO, Ngo served as the Sergeant at Arms and was responsible for regulating events such as elections and making sure everything ran smoothly. 

This year, she serves as Service Vice President and manages all service events that take place during the term. She serves alongside the Membership Vice President, who takes care of all matters pertaining to members and membership as a whole. 

As Service Vice President, Ngo and her co-vice president have been able to host more innovative events, such as workshops, for their members, even while having a completely virtual term. 

“While it is the most recent virtual term, there were a lot of online services, [but] we found that our members weren’t as engaged as before,” Ngo said. “So we wanted to provide service to our organization by creating workshops to allow members to learn more and also engage in important dialogue.”

For the rest of her term as Service Vice President, as well as in the future, Ngo wants to engage members even more than this year through collaborative events with members from different chapters of the organization. 

“We hope to reach out to [different chapters] to plan more large-scale events that are able to engage everyone,” Ngo said. 

Though she has already done so much as the previous Sergeant at Arms and one of the current Vice Presidents, Ngo has set these goals for the club in hopes that they will lead to an even better term than ever.