At the “Interfaith Fun Festival” Sunday, several Christian organizations joined together for an afternoon of basketball and balloon animals with mentally disabled children and adults.

About 50 people attended the Beyer Hall event, said Nate Jacobi, a member of the planning committee. The participants included people with mental disabilities from the Arc of Story County.

Megan Magill, who became involved with the festival through Collegiate Presbyterian Church and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, said the purpose of the event was to get various religious groups together to do something positive for the community.

“The idea was to do a service project with a bunch of different campus Christian groups,” said Magill, junior in Spanish and interdisciplinary studies. “We’ve just had volunteers from a lot of different campus groups and churches around campus. And then we invited the disabled people around Ames and the Story County area.”

The afternoon’s activities included basketball, volleyball and bowling, as well as arts and crafts activities such as making balloon animals, masks, pasta necklaces and picture frames. The volunteers also joined with the mentally disabled participants for songs, dance and prayer.

Carrie Chavez, peer minister for St. Thomas Aquinas, said she was glad to get different Christian groups to work on an activity together.

“[The Fun Festival] was just to bring different students on campus and different religious organizations together to do a service activity, and we decided to do it with children and adults with disabilities,” said Chavez, junior in sociology and Spanish. “We wanted to incorporate service and then have us come together as groups instead of just having one organization [involved].”

A theme of the festival was “Finding fellowship through service,” said Jacobi, junior in psychology.

“What we were trying to do is do an interfaith service event, where we could have some of the different religious groups on campus come together and do a service activity,” he said.

The organizers hope to make the Fun Festival an annual event, Magill said.

“If you hear about it next year, get involved. It’s a great way to do community service and help people,” she said.

Chavez said events such as the festival help to disprove the misconception that college students are apathetic.

“We had a lot of students come, and that was wonderful, and it just shows that college students really do care about what goes on and about helping people,” she said.

The event was sponsored by the Catholic Student Community, The Salt Company, Navigators, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, St. Thomas Aquinas Church and Catholic Student Center, 2210 Lincoln Way, and Collegiate Presbyterian Church, 157 Sheldon Ave.