Everything you need to know before the Trojan Dance Marathon
A day where your dance moves can actually save lives instead of repulse people
If you like dancing and simultaneously saving the lives of sick children then you basically meet the criteria for The Trojan Dance Marathon.
Each year at USC several hundreds of students come together and dance their hearts out to save children’s’ lives. The Trojan Dance Marathon is a philanthropic event lasting 12 hours long raising money for Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.
This year’s goal is to raise a hefty $75,000 for the kids, $20,000 up from last year. The external director of TDM, Rachel Lester, was kind enough to let us know what efforts go into the dance marathon.
She said: “We have 20 people on the executive board and 20 more people on the planning committee so it’s a total of 40 people working all year. At the end of this past Spring, we start working to put on events all year. We fundraise at tailgates, and we actually put on our first 5K this year in addition to our dance marathon.”
Rachel has been a director of TDM for all three years here at USC so far. She said the more she puts into it the more she loves it and she, “just wanted to have as much impact on the organization as (she) could.”
The event has a massive showing here at USC, you really don’t want to be left out. Rachel estimated that, “around 1,000 people register and then there are a lot of people that come and register the day of, so at least one thousand different people come at some point.”
The event takes place on February 27th, but there has been multiple ways to show some love for those little kiddies on campus prior to the marathon.
Pie For A Life, blood donations, a fundraising zumba class and even orders from Insomnia cookies all took place this past week under the Trojan Dance Marathon. Not to mention a record number of blood donations was just broken on February 5th with 100 blood donors which made it possible for 240 kids to be treated in just one day.
If that isn’t encouragement to make a difference then I don’t know what is.
Unless you hate having fun dancing with friends while saving the lives of small children, then make sure to register for the marathon as part of a Greek house, USC club, or group of friends.