Mariah Green walked into the room dressed in mermaid socks, a shiny green skirt and a mermaid shirt. Her choice of wardrobe only added to her welcoming smile. While her outfit may have seemed strange, it was a normal sight for the students in the organization Eudaimonia.
Even before Eudaimonia was formed Green and her friend Jonathan Burroughs were always spreading happiness.
“My friend and I dressed up for fun and gave high fives to everyone during finals to boost their spirit,” Green said. “It was so much fun and we were like, we should do stuff like this more often.”
After that, the idea of Eudaimonia was born. That summer, Green got all of the paperwork together and registered the organization with the University of South Florida.
The only thing left to do was to name the organization. Green and Burroughs came up with a lot of different names but they decided to go with Eudaimonia.
“We came up with Eudaimonia because it means good spiritedness. It is doing good, just for the sake of doing good,” Green said.
Eudaimonia is a Greek word meaning happiness. Green and her friend Burroughs wanted to pick a name that was memorable and interesting. They wanted people to wonder what Eudaimonia was and what they stood for.
“Eudaimonia is an inclusion of everyone,” Green said. “It’s about not being so closed off and closed minded toward others. It is about being accepting of everybody and staying positive.”
Eudaimonia, organized many events throughout the year to help create happiness for the students of the University of South Florida. Members made homemade cookies and passed them out to students to help with homesickness during the third week of classes. Eudaimonia also gave out free hugs and wagon rides to students last year.
“A whole group came out of a chemistry exam, they seemed so sad, so we gave out free hugs,” Tatiana Morales, one member, said. “We actually changed people’s day. We made them happy and it was really cool.”
This event really spread the word of Eudaimonia around campus. People recognized them for their actions and they began to connect with students, which is why the free hugs event is Green’s favorite event.
Free hugs are the best hugs!
“I love it when people reach out and message us on Facebook asking about the club. That makes me really happy,” Green said.
This is how Megan Dias, a current member of Eudaimonia, joined. She found out about the organization completely by chance. Dias discovered a note stuck to her desk that gave her words of encouragement.
“I posted the note on Facebook because I needed to find the person that wrote it,” Dias said. “It got hundreds of likes and eventually I got in contact with the person who wrote the note.”
After that Dias knew that she needed to be in this club. Through Eudaimonia she met many inspirational people including, Mariah Green.
“Mariah is amazing,” Dias said. “She is fun, inspirational and I really look up to her and admire her.”
Other members of Eudaimonia agree. Morales even called her “unintentionally inspirational.” Green has a positive attitude and a desire to just inspire happiness. Regardless of what is going on in her own life, she still wants to make other people happy.
“Eudaimonia is a lot of how happy everyone is,” Green said. “People say that we have made their day or week. It was such a small thing but seeing other people that happy made me happy.”