Getting Ready for The Big Event!
As I mentioned in one of my first blogs, I dance a lot. More specifically, I am involved in a lot of organizations that require me to dance. Of those, one of my favorites is Dance Marathon. Dance Marathon is the biggest philanthropic organization on campus and spends the year fundraising for the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital here on campus. There are many smaller events throughout the year that all lead up to the Big Event on February 20th, 2016. This year our goal is to raise $200k, and we’re already at $116k! I think it’ll happen for sure, and the pride and honor I feel in being involved in such a successful organization that stands for this cause is unreal. I feel so lucky to have been a part of it, and it’s not even over yet!
Within the Dance Marathon organization, we have mini committees. I’m on the Morale committee, which is essentially keeping up the hype for all 13.1 hours of the Big Event as well as drumming up excitement leading up to it. We’ve been meeting once a week all year to get the activities and decorations for the event ready, along with learning an 8-minutes dance that we’ll be performing on the hour every hour throughout the whole day. This past meeting, we finished learning the whole thing AHH! Now, it’s just practicing until perfection and getting together the rest of what we need for the event. I’m getting so excited!
Tomorrow, we’ll be helping the different teams make banners that say something like “Pi Phi Loves Dance Marathon” etc. (Pi Phi is my sorority, and we have a Dance Marathon team and team captain and everything! So proud). I’m also so excited to finally meet some of the Miracle Kids who have directly benefitted from what we raise through Dance Marathon. They’ll be at the Big Event and we as Morale have a lot of fun activities planned for them to make sure it’s a lot of fun and memorable! Selfishly, I just know they’ll be super cute and can’t wait to hang with them in between dancing my face off and changing into different costumes for the theme hours. In case you’re wondering what the different theme hours are (a different one every hour), they are the following:
1. Superhero
2. Hippie
3. Minions
4. 50’s
5. Beach
6. Western
7. Black and Gold
8. Holiday
9. Disney
10. Ugly Sweater
11. Nerd
12. Neon/Disco
13. PJ’s
I have most of my outfits planned out for the themes, but will definitely have to take at least one more big shopping trip to a thrift shop or dollar store! So excited. I love dressing up, I love dancing, and I love kids. The fact that I get to combine all of these and make a difference for the lives of these children and their families, is absolutely unbelievable. I’m so grateful for what Dance Marathon has given me, and can’t wait to get to give some of that back on February 20th!
(Shameless plug: if you’d like to donate, check out my Donor Drive at http://events.dancemarathon.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=donorDrive.participant&participantID=92804)