Her Campus La Verne partnered with Shades of Essence, I Am That Girl:La Verne, Black Student Union and Lenses For Life to celebrate the second annual Shades of Pink Festival on October 24th at Sneaky Park.
While searching for fun and effective ways to raise money for Breast Cancer Awareness month, Shades of Essence created the ” Shades of Pink” foundation.
The first Shades of Pink included free yogurt from 21 choices, a raffle and items for sale. Shades of Pink also had a guest appearance for the women who made this concept possible , Yoli Anderson, a former alumna who is suffering from stage 3 breast cancer.
The event brought joy and honor amongst the La Verne campus, as over $200 was raised. With the success of last year, Shades of Essence decided to bring the event back . However, this year they wanted to make a few changes.
Ebony Fredieu, the president of Shades of Essence extended the event to a few of the smaller clubs on campus to recreate Greek Life’s “Letters On The Lawn”. This event bring Breast Cancer Awareness on the La Verne campus by serving free food and information from the sororities and fraternities. It brought joy for the Greek Life community, but left the smaller clubs on campus defeated and without a purpose.
“We loved the idea, we just wished it was more like a club fair or something more inclusive for the campus clubs to participate in,” D’Nae Lewis , Shades of Essence Treasurer, said.
“This gave us the idea to make this event a festival by adding all to join us for a great cause.”
Each club present had a booth that either raised money or awareness for the event. Her Campus La Verne had a candy table and game called “find the lump”, where guest had to dig in the large bowl of paper to find the squishy item. The game was reminiscent to both women and men to receive monthly mammograms. Shades of Essence, I Am That Girl and Black Student Union sold baked goods, wristbands, hats and more pink themed items. In order to bring more guest to the event, I Am That Girl had catering from L&L’s Barbecue for free.
The second idea was to extend the event to the athletics department. At the volleyball and soccer games, Shades of Essence had a table selling items for the occasion.
“Our goal for Shades of Essence is to continue making this an event, even when the people who created it graduated,” Fredieu said.
“We want to continue this tradition and see it get bigger and better every time.”
For the remainder of the semester I Am That Girl will continue raising money for the “Shades of Pink” foundation as a reminder that breast cancer does not only happen in October ,but all year out.