This year, Dance Marathon has implemented some new, fun, and creative fundraising ideas to raise money for pediatric cancer patients at Stead Family Children’s Hospital. Over winter break was the start of the first challenge called the Winter Break Challenge. Some of those challenges included participating in the winter fun run, recruiting a friend to join DM, buying a dance marathon merchandise item, raising over $250, and so much more. There were twelve challenges in general, to represent all twelve floors of the Stead Family Children's hospital. This was a fun way to keep everyone involved over the long break and allow them to have fun while raising awareness to such an important cause. With this year being especially tough due to the fact that everything is virtual, it is important to us that we continue to come up with new ways for everyone to stay engaged and to spread our lime everywhere that we are able to. These challenges allowed for that, and everyone who chose to participate rose up to the challenge and really made the kids a part of their winter break. It is so important to us that we don’t ever stop fighting for these kiddos, no matter where we are or what we have going on.

Along with doing the Winter Fundraising Challenge for the first time, on January 4th we also celebrated our first ever FTK Push Day! If you are familiar, this day was very similar to the Day to DM day hosted in October. It was 24 hours dedicated to raising money for the strongest kiddos in the world. For us dancers, we had zoom parties we could attend to encourage and support each other on all of the hard work and effort everyone was putting in. We had some very generous sponsors that were able to match our earnings for a few hours and we are very appreciative of that! Everyone is working their hardest to raise as much as they can as fast as they can due to the fact that the Big Event is only a few short weeks away. Overall it was a very successful day. Any day that we are able to bring awareness and help out these amazing kiddos is a good day in our book. We appreciate everyone who has helped make a difference in these families’ lives. These new opportunities have allowed us to spread awareness and make a difference in the lives of so many kids. We can’t wait to see what the Big Event brings our way!

By: Sarah Schminke, Public Relations Committee, DM 27