This past Saturday, Drexel University’s Dance Marathon organization held its annual DragonThon main event. By the end of the six-hour event, they announced that over the course of the year, the organization had raised $50,400.17, all of which was donated to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. In the last three years, they have raised over $138,000 for the hospital, and this does not seem to be stopping anytime soon.
Formed in 2020, the organization just completed its fifth year at Drexel. Each year, the operation grows larger and larger. “I have had the pleasure of seeing this organization grow year after year and I am so proud of what we achieved,” says Hailee Walker, who served as the program’s executive director this past year. “We fight to give kids a chance at enjoying childhood, because kids can’t wait for a cure. They only get to be kids once.”
At the end of the day, this is what it is all for. All of the money raised by the organization goes towards the Child Life department at CHOP, which essentially allows patients to live their best lives possible despite their situations. While in the hospital, patients are given access to top-of-the-line treatment and care. They are given the opportunity to live as normal a life as they can, and are able to prepare themselves for their lives after treatment is over.
This is why what Dance Marathon does is so important, and why those involved work so hard day in and day out. Even though the main event was only six hours, the work the program does is 24/7, 365. Planning for the year began as early as last summer, and fundraising efforts lasted until the clock struck six p.m. the Saturday of the event. Throughout the year, the organization hosted countless events designed to raise as much money as possible for the cause. This included Flyers games, fundraising drives and the crowd-favorite pi day, where over $1,000 was raised from people throwing whipped cream pies at each other.
Dance Marathon also makes an effort to involve other on-campus organizations in its philanthropic efforts, partnering with fraternities, sororities, sports teams and other clubs, all of which compete throughout the year to see who can raise the most money. Many of these teams also partner with a “miracle kid,” a CHOP patient who spends time with the team and is able to be involved in their activities, which is a great time for both the kid and the team.
Even though the whole year was filled with excitement and good times, the main event is when everything comes into fruition, and everyone can truly celebrate a year’s worth of hard work. It had everything a child, or even a room full of college kids, could ever ask for: there were games, raffles, dancing and even a bouncy house. It also served as another reminder of how essential the organization is. On a poster on one of the walls, people were given the opportunity to write why they dance, and it was clear that this was very personal to a lot of people in attendance. Families shared their own experiences, and at the very end, everyone joined together in a “circle of hope,” where after once again expressing they were personally affected by cancer and other diseases, everyone was asked to then cut off the hospital bands that they were given at the beginning, signifying hope for the future.
While it is hard to doubt how fun it is to race through a bouncy house, it was moments like this that made the event so powerful. If it was not already clear, the true importance of Dance Marathon and everything that it does was put directly into the spotlight, and when the final total was announced just minutes later, the fifty thousand raised became all the more valuable.