Name: Maddie Morris
Hometown: New Vernon, NJ
Age: 19
Year: First Year
Major: Undecided
What is Love Your Melon?
Started in 2012 by two college students at the University of St. Thomas, Love Your Melon is an organization that strives to give a hat to children battling cancer. It is an apparel brand run by college students that follows the ‘buy one give one’ model, so when someone purchases a hat, Love Your Melon donates one to a child with cancer. In addition to giving hats to kids with cancer, Love Your Melon also helps fund research and gives help to the families. By partnering with the Pinky Swear Foundation, Love Your Melon gives direct financial help to the children and their families. The other foundation Love Your Melon has partnered with is CureSearch, whose proceeds go towards research to help find a cure for childhood cancer.
How did you get involved?
I know people at other schools who are involved with Love Your Melon on their campuses and I wanted to see if we had one here. I logged onto the website one day and requested that we get one on campus. A few weeks later I got an email from some other people who also wanted to get a campus crew together, and thus Elon’s Love Your Melon crew was born.
How many hats have you sold so far on the Elon Campus?
As of right now we have sold 136 hats. This is awesome because we are a brand new crew. However, Love Your Melon does not only sell hats, they will be introducing caps, shirts and other things when there are new product releases. The more items we sell, the more credits we earn, which helps earn hats for superhero visits and other supplies. Superhero visits allow us to go to houses or hospitals dressed as superheros to donate hats. If you want to buy something from Love Your Melon make sure you click the Elon Campus Crew at checkout! That will help us get the chance to visit children!
What have you learned from being apart of this organization?
Love Your Melon was the first organization I joined here at Elon. It has really taught me that it is important to put effort into being apart of an organization. In high school, I never took the clubs I was part of seriously. However, here at Elon, you need to make an effort to be apart of the organizations you’re involved in. You can’t just join a club because it looks good on your resume, you should join a club because you feel passionate about it and you have fun with it. Love Your Melon is something I really enjoy doing, it’s for a great cause and there are a bunch of really great people who are involved in it.
What are your plans for Love Your Melon for your next three years at Elon?
As of right now, we are not a recognized club by the school. Hopefully next year we will be a recognized club on campus and be able to expand the amount of people involved. We also are hoping to get a Moseley table sometime soon so we can advertise the cause more. We are going to have a Love Your Melon table at Elonthon so be sure to come check that out! Also be sure to check the website for news on new product releases; the more purchases we get, the more we can do!