Below, sophomore Maya Joglekar describes the 24-hour social media challenge we held last Wednesday to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

As Tri Delta women, St. Jude holds a special place in our hearts. Not only is it our goal to raise as much money as possible for St. Jude, but we also try to raise awareness of their mission to end childhood cancer. St. Jude doesn’t just take care of patients and their families during treatment, but they also provide an environment that feels welcoming and safe to everyone there. Families never have to worry about any costs, all they have to focus on is giving their child all the love and support to get better. And, when they do get better and finish their chemotherapy treatment, friends, family, and staff come together to throw a No More Chemo Party!

Our goal for the 24-hour social media challenge is to raise $24,000 in 24 hours by throwing our own virtual party! We use graphics and continuously post them to our Instagram and Facebook to encourage friends and family to donate. It is always so much fun and this year we added a little bit of ~spice~ with some chapter challenges! One of the challenges was to pie Leah, our Chapter President, when we raised $13k! And if we reached our goal of $24,000, a group of seniors would jump into the reflection pond on campus. We also presented other fundraising methods like raffles and reaching out to other groups on campus to hit our goal.

Sydney, our Director of Philanthropy, and I were absolutely blown away when we woke up the morning of the event because our chapter raised $17,000 just overnight. At this point, we were already making huge progress in getting to our goal! We kept refreshing the total all day and the fundraising never slowed down. When it was all said and done, we raised a total of $36,156.27 in only 24 hours!!! We were amazed because we never even dreamed that we could raise this much. It was a blast getting to come together as a chapter and campaign for St. Jude. And, because we SURPASSED the goal, Sydney and I ended the night by watching some of the seniors jump into the reflection pond to celebrate.

DLAM, Maya