DANCE MARATHON

$70,885.03. All. For. The. Kids.

Why do I dance? I dance for more hugs, for more laughs, for more best friends, for more first dates and for those who can't. 

A little bit of my DM history... 

I have been involved since elementry school, when we had two hour mini dance marathons. As I grew up I participated in University of Iowa's 24 hour dance marathon.  When I went to Western Illinios I decided that we needed a Dance Marathon. In 2013 we gathered an executive board together and made a goal of $12,000.  The day of the event came a year later and we flipped over $22,000! We almost doubled our goal! It was an incredible experience and we knew we could make it even bigger.  The following year I became the Vice President of Internal Operations working with dancer relations, morale, entertainment and anything that had to be done day of our big event. We made a large goal of $40,000.  It was slightly terrifying making our goal so much larger than the previous year but with a lot of hard work from the entire eboard and our amazing WIU dancers we managed to raise over $53,000!! 

As I graduated I still wanted to be invovled in Dance Marathon because Children's Miracle Network has a special place in my heart and I wasn't ready to part with it yet! I became the Western Illinois Univeristy Dance Marathon Alumni Director! I worked on getting more alumni involved and reaching out to them to raise our total.  Going into the event we we hadn't quite reached our goal of $70,000 FTK. We did some major fundraising pushes and doing all we could to make sure we did all we could to reach that goal.  As we made miracles happen WIU raised $16,000 within our 12 hour event! IT WAS INCREDIBLE! After 12 hours of standing on our feet, dancing and making memories our amazing miracles kids flipped over the most exciting number WIUDM had seen, $70,885.03!!!!!! 

Not only was I director of alumni relations but I also got the chance to perform too! I love every chance I get to twirl on stage and share my passion with others! This was just one of the amazing experiences I have had with Dance Marathon and I can't wait for the future and all we can do FTK!