This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Texas chapter.
On Tuesday April 16, you may have noticed an entertaining sight as you passed by Gregory plaza. People were in rain ponchos and were having pies smashed in their faces…voluntarily! However, these people endured having pies to the face for a good cause. Alpha Epsilon Delta Pre-Health Honors Society hosted a Pie-A-President fundraiser where presidents of various organizations volunteered to be pied to gather proceeds for the Dell Children’s Surgical Global Outreach Program. This program is aimed to bring surgical care to underserved children in other countries. Kelsey Stewart, a UT junior, was a huge part in planning and putting together the event.
HCTX: Has Alpha Epsilon Delta hosted such a large fundraiser before?
KS: This year, AED decided that we wanted to try something new, as far as putting on a University wide event, which we’d never attempted before. I was the main proponent behind this idea since I’m involved in some other organizations on campus that do larger events, and I also have some personal experience in event planning. I’m currently an officer in AED as the Natural Sciences Council Representative and next year I’ll be working as the vice president within AED.
HCTX: What was your role in the fundraiser?
KS: I served as the head of the event, coordinating the planning, advertising, and implementation of everything. I had a committee as well as the rest of the AED officers to help me through the event. We originally planned on creating a small-scale event for our first attempt at such a thing, and only contacted a few organization presidents that we had personal ties with. Soon, the event gained some publicity, and we had other presidents asking if they could participate, and eventually ended up with 20 total presidents.
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HCTX: How did your organization become involved with the Dell Children’s Surgical Global Outreach Program? Where all are of the proceeds going?
KS: After we decided what we wanted to do, the Outreach program sort of fell into place perfectly. We had Dr. Julie Sanchez, a pediatric surgeon at Dell’s, come to speak at one of our meetings. AED absolutely loved her, and her outreach, and we decided it would be the perfect cause to raise money for. The outreach started a couple of years ago and they have been taking a week out of the year to travel to Guatemala and provide surgical care to children who wouldn’t be able to receive the surgeries they needed to be healthy. The doctors have thus far funded the program themselves, paying for their travels, and all of the surgical equipment necessary for when they got there (amounting up to $100,000). The program now consists of a team of about 12, with 2-3 surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses, and other med support. The money we’ve raised will go straight to buying the equipment they need to carry out the surgeries they’ll be conducting for the children this year.
HCTX: How successful was the event?
KS: The fundraiser was extremely successful and I was beyond happy with how well it went. We raised $1,130.65 from college students, at our first event ever. We were pretty busy all day and went through about 80 cans of whipped cream!
HCTX: Are there future plans to continue this fundraiser?
KS: As VP next year, I plan to continue the tradition of what we started, whether that is in the form of a similar fundraising event or something completely different. Our goal for this event was to benefit the larger healthcare community in Austin by involving the UT campus in an event beyond the scope of AED itself. I’m very excited to take this challenge on next year and to improve and expand what we’ve started with Pie-A-President.