Every year, thousands of people get together at Penn State to help raise money for the Penn State Hershey's Children's Hospital. This event takes place for three days in the Bryce Jordan Center. This year at THON, students raised 9.7 million dollars for the children's hospital. This happens to be the biggest student philanthropy event in the world. THON attracts over 15,000 students each year to partake in the three-day dance marathon. Rachel Weeks, a sophomore at Penn State says, "Once the families started telling the stories of how THON really impacted them, it brought me to tears, and it truly made me realize how much of a difference I was making. I am so thankful to be able to participate and help run a dance marathon as inspiring as THON is."
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But how do they raise so much money? It takes about a year to raise the money and plan the event. One way to raise the money is "canning," where students collect spare change from drivers. Penn State and THON were both affected negatively when a student, Tally Sepot, was killed in a car accident while coming back to campus from raising money. This decreased the canning on campus, but Penn State still did an amazing job collecting millions of dollars for children with cancer. They dedicated part of THON to the student who died.
Towson University's version of THON is TigerTHON, which takes place in SECU Arena March 4 to March 5 from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. Guess what? You don't have to stay for all 12 hours! Teams often have shifts. I will be there for 6 hours and I am still raising money for my team. Each team is basically fighting for a child from Children's Miracle Network. Many people in Greek life and other organizations participate; however, you don't have to be Greek to make a team! My friends (family cluster) from LeaderShape made a team to support a little boy named Clayton. You also don't have to know how to dance. It's just fun and for an amazing cause. Towson's fundraising goal is $250,000. As of March 1st, 2016, TigerTHON has raised 41 percent of their goal. To make a team please visit their website to register your team.
If you cannot make a team, you can always donate. No matter what organization you donate to, it all goes to the same cause. My sorority, Zeta Tau Alpha's page is here and my LeaderShape team's page is here.
Any team you donate to will be appreciative. TigerTHON is an amazing opportunity to help the children of Children's Miracle Network. Although Towson is a lot smaller than Penn State, we still have the ability to be extremely successful for an amazing event. Shoutout to Helen Grafton (the president of TigerTHON) and her team for working so hard to make an amazing event.
Also, congratulations to Penn State for raising so much money at THON.
