You’ve all seen those super styling bright neon highlighter shirts around campus. While you may take them as a warning sign to go to the bike path on Bruin Walk, consider that there is so much below the surface of those bright shirts. I promise they aren’t just to bring out the eyes of the students wearing them and they aren’t just handy to avoid getting hit by cars while biking in the dark. There is so much more that people need to know about what the cause behind them truly is.
1. Charity
Whether it’s all you do, or your only experience with it was your high school’s required community service hours, this is a fantastic opportunity to get involved. Today there are still 600 babies born each day with HIV. The 26-hour dance-a-thon fundraiser UCLA’s Pediatric AIDS Coalition is hosting on April 2 gives you the opportunity to help bring that number to zero. To have the chance to take part in eliminating mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS is absolutely incredible. We all have our individual hardships, but growing up with this awful disease is something no one should ever have to face. Together, we can save people from a lifetime with HIV/AIDS.
2. FOMO
Some people hear “dancing for 26 hours without sitting” and are absolutely stoked! Others are terrified, and understandably so. But you don’t have to worry because the Pediatric AIDS Coalition makes the event so interactive and fun that you will forget what sitting – and sleeping – even feel like. You’ll leave with memories of a lifetime, new friends who watched you simultaneously laugh and cry while stuffing your face with pizza at 3 a.m., and some very sore muscles (who needs the gym?). Your friends are going to be making memories that you don’t want to miss. And if you don’t go, I promise you won’t remember how you spent that day otherwise.
3. Love
We all have people we love. Everyone is loved by someone. There isn’t much more to it than that. When you meet the kids at Dance Marathon fighting HIV/AIDS your heart may break, but you’ll be amazed to find how much life, energy, and enthusiasm is inside of each of them. If you imagine someone you love going through this, you know there isn’t anything you wouldn’t do to rid them of HIV/AIDS. There are going to be children born HIV+ in the next year, but if you come to Dance Marathon, you’ll be able to say that you took part in saving a child from the agony of living with HIV.
To quote John Wooden, “You can’t live a perfect day until you do something for someone who will never be able to repay you.” Take this chance to live a perfect day, plus two hours.
Register to dance all 26 hours or morale for 3 hours on April 2nd here:
Watch why the Pediatric AIDS Coalition members will fight until no child is born HIV+
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mp4dlVlVlOc
Photos courtesy of the UCLA Pediatric AIDS Coalition Facebook page