Herein you'll find passion, dedication, and triumph. You'll find spirit, love, and caring. Herein you'll see aspiration, inspiration, and the foundations of greatness. Herein you'll find our history.
Dance Marathon is an organization and also a fundraising event. The event is a marathon of dancing, games, entertainment, and all around fun, wherein you stay on your feet for 12 hours straight.
Challenging the status quo with our Dancing with the CWRU Stars fundraiser, we paired up CWRU faculty and staff with professional dancers for a competition just like on TV.
It's about making a child forget they're even in the hospital.
Giving students that have the guts, the chance to stand for something.
We've done some pretty mind-blowing things, and we're not done yet.
It started with a phone call. Well it may have started a bit before, but that's when the message went out. It's time to bring Dance Marathon to CWRU. What inspired this action? It's simple, the sign to the right and an a capella concert at the University of Michigan in the spring of 2008 entitled the UMDM Charity Concert. But what's UMDM?
While the acronym UMDM has a nice ring to it, it stands for so much more: The University of Michigan Dance Marathon (now Dance Marathon at U of M, but that's besides the point). The point is there was this great organization at U of M doing amazing things for kids through dance and Case didn't have it. So what's one to do...? Research of course. So for the next year, countless hours were spent figuring out this concept of dancing for hours on end to raise money, which led to the discovery of this, perhaps the single greatest inspirational tool used to launch Dance Marathon at CWRU.
It was recruitment time. Time to see if this thing was worth it. Will Dance Marathon capture the hearts and minds of the world (well the campus that it is), or will it flop? It was a hot sunny day at the 2009 Student Activities fair, the strategy was simple: no sitting, stand in front of the table, and don't let anyone walk by without telling them our story (as short as it was). For the next two hours, three of us wearing matching "DANCE MARATHON" t-shirts began making sparks.
Running behind with not enough hands, I entered the Cleveland Room of Thwing to standing-room only. Huddled around a large conference table, around twenty five people await anxiously to hear what this thing called Dance Marathon is. But no meeting should end without action, so we stayed late making inspirational cards for the kids in the Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital. But the real gifts to come out of this meeting were the people, the awesome freshman that made the group possible through thick and thin.
Our core mission of engagement could not be achieved without impacting kids directly, working with them to brighten their day. So we quickly formed an alliance with UH working with Marge Galla to coordinate volunteering efforts in the hospital. We were almost overwhelmed with the demand to participate. Featured here is the first orientation group on 12 September 2009.
Ready to serve, the first group of volunteers is ready to distribute an assortment of diversionary activities to the kids in Rainbow babies and Children's Hospital. Included herein, coloring books, wooden planes for painting, and toy cars. FTK!
Never having thrown a fundraiser, we started small and perhaps cliche, we held a bake sale. But have no misconceptions, bake sales are more work than they may seem. The results? One person went to the ER during food prep, one person baked for 7 hours, and over three days, we raised over $320 and delivered many smiles. FTK.
In an effort to better engage the children in the hospital, we set out to bring in a little Halloween spirit through a pumpkin painting event. Having no budget, the group acquired over 150 pumpkins through donations. Unfortunately we found out the cancer patients couldn't participate due to the pumpkins possibly carrying infectious agents. So we painted them with other patients and did a lot ourselves. We distributed them on the non-oncology floors and brought smiles to many kids' faces!
In being heartbroken that all the effort in putting together the pumpkin painting event came short on impacting cancer patients, we devised a new strategy: trick or treat bags. It was perfect, it fit the essence of halloween, we didn't need to hand deliver it, and nothing inside could be considered hazardous. The beautiful artwork was done by Anna, and the whole project thoroughly exceeded our expectations.
In an effort to bring students and faculty together, we embarked on something truly unique, something special, something to our knowledge, no other dance marathon was doing: Dancing with the Stars. But to avoid copyright issues, we called it Dancing with the CWRU Stars. We recruited nine CWRU faculty and staff and paired them with professional dancers from around the area. The stage was set, this was would be the event to see whether we had the guts; whether we could do something big, our stepping stone to the marathon.
It was beginning to feel real, the first Dancing with the CWRU Stars was only a few hours away and through the effort of a wonderful team and family, Horsburgh Gym really came together. We had no money, no budget, everything was pulled together through donation and creativity. Lighting: a couple studio lights and an old flood on a chair. Sound: random equipment from Delt. Floor outlining: icicle lights. A definite recipe for success.
In a last minute effort to step up the production, we purchased a balloon arch kit: assembly required. But if any team could make it happen it was ours. The spice of purple and white really helped make the event feel special and we loved the way it turned out.
A few sisters from AXO took on the tall order of making the inaugural trophies. Inspired by the actual ones from the show, they emulated them beautifully using stemware, disco balls, and bent wire. A frugal path to a rich production.
When recruiting Stars for the event, we knew we wanted to go big and you can't get much bigger than a first year chemistry professor. Michael Kenney and Shannon Liauw opened the event with a great jive and set the tone for what turned out to be a spectacular night of performances.
A supporter from the beginning, Glenn Nicholls has made a huge impact on the university and student life through his role as Vice President of Student Affairs. We were absolutely honored to have him judge the inaugural Dancing with the CWRU Stars alongside Director of Greek Life, Wes Schaub.
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