Students dance for charity

The Magnolia Ballroom was packed Feb. 25 with students who volunteered 12-hours of their time for Dance Marathon helped raise more than $20,000.

Dance Marathon, a 12-hour event to raise money for the Children’s Miracle Network in Macon, began at noon and ended at midnight.

This is the Dance Marathon’s second year on the GC&SU campus and the event was a huge success, raising money and increasing participants this year. Totals came to $21,138, with more than 130 students participating in the event.

“We tripled the amount of money we wanted to raise and had about four times the amount of students participate this year,” said Libby Ellis, sophomore and Dance Marathon fundraising chair. “I can’t wait to see what happens next year. I am looking forward to seeing how much money we can raise and participants in the following years. I think it will only continue to grow when people start realizing how much of a difference they are making in a child’s life.”

The 12-hour event was not all dancing. Students played games, met Miracle children, learned a morale dance, and a whole lot more.

“Our goal was to raise as much money as possible to support CMN, but it was also to keep all the students entertained and help them realize that they were impacting so many people’s lives by donating only 12-hours of their own,” said Ashley Hall, senior Dance Marathon executive director. “I hope that they had fun and will come back next year and bring some friends.”

Senior english major Meredith Colbert said she teared up when hearing the miracle stories of the children every hour of the event. The miracle stories explained what the children had been diagnosed with, how the families have been handling it, and the children’s experiences with hospitals.

“It was very inspirational to listen to the miracle stories because you wanted to reach out to those families,” said Colbert. “(I) wanted to make it all go away so they would not have to suffer through the pain. In the back of my mind I thought, ‘In some small way, I am making a difference by being here and donating money to support those families in their time of need’.”

Mandy Mosier, a sophomore education major, attended Dance Marathon and said she was excited that she could make a difference and was able to meet some of the children.

“The whole night was a complete blast,” Mosier said. “I was really glad to see that I was making a difference when I got to meet the families and play with the kids.”

Executive members put in hours upon hours of their time to make the event successful.

“I need to figure out what to do with my time now,” Hall said. “I can’t really remember what I used to do before I started spending the last year planning Dance Marathon.”

Dance Marathon was sponsored by Wal-Mart, the Student Government Association, Magnolia Park and The Grove.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Mar 3 2006. Filed under Other. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry