THON 2009

I have been involved in the Penn State IFC/Panhelenic Dance Marathon (THON) each of my 4 years at Penn State.  THON is the largest student-run philanthropy in the world, and it is a year-long fund-raiser, with all proceeds going to the Four Diamonds Fund.  This fund helps to defray the cost of pediatric cancers for families who have children afflicted with the terrible set of diseases.  The money we raise pays for all of the cost of treatment that the families’ insurance doesn’t cover, it goes to gas, hotel, and meal vouchers for the families, and it funds some cutting edge research and first-class facilities at the Hershey Medical Center.  This year, despite the horrific economy, we were able to raise $7,490,133.87 for the kids!  (For more information about what THON is, please visit http://thon.org/whatisthon )

I fell in love with THON my freshman year, when I was involved in the security as a Rules and Regulations committee member.  Seeing the kids in these families enjoying themselves as much as they did during that weekend helped me realize just how awesome an organization THON is.  Shortly after that THON, the 2007 Technology Overall came into one of my classes asking for applicants — since then, I have been a Tech captain and have loved every minute of it!

This year, the major task that I took on was rewriting the system which is used to allow visitors of THON to visit their friends and family who are dancing.  One of the other two-thirds of “El Tres Friends” (as the three of us third year Tech captains call ourselves) helped me set up all of the tables in the database and we began coding before we were even selected as captains again.  Both of us as well as a very promising third addition were selected for the Pass Team, and the rest, as they say, is history!  We finished up the system, tested it thoroughly, and had it in place for THON Weekend!

The weekend went amazingly, and our system was a huge success!  All-in-all, every bit of work we put into the system over the past 10 months paid off tremendously, and it was one of the best feelings in the world to see it working as well as it did!  If you ever want to know more about THON or want to hear some stories from me, I love THON and sharing it with others is one of my favorite things to do, so just ask!