For every hat that is purchased, another is donated to a child fighting cancer. This is the Love Your Melon campaign. The nonprofit organization wants every child in the United States to have one of their hats to wear as they go through the battle with cancer. Based out of colleges across the United States, college students organize and run their campus crew have a chance to make a direct impact in the lives of the kids within their own communities who are going through this fight. The idea started out as nothing more than that, and has now grown to recieve national recognition from the likes of The Today Show, Good Morning America, and celebrities.
Love Your Melon was created by college students Bryan Keller and Zachary Quinn for an entrepreneurship class at the University of St. Thomas. The friends wanted to make a difference in the lives of children fighting cancer, and thought they had a good idea that could get college students involved with giving back without asking them to spend a lot of money; buy a hat to give a hat.
Based out of Minneapolis, the duo has expanded Love Your Melon from an idea in a classroom to a nonprofit organization that has ambassador crews in 108 colleges across the nation with more joining every week. Since being founded in October 2012, Love Your Melon has supplied more than 40,000 hats to cancer kids across the nation.
A group of students here at Stout, led by Taylor Dapauw, want to bring Love Your Melon to our campus. Taylor first heard about Love Your Melon from one of her roommates who attended school with Zach Sobiech, a large influence for Love Your Melon and was one of the first of those battling cancer to have a wish granted through the organization.
From there, Taylor had to contact the founders, gather a few friends, and is now in the process of selling 100 hats to become an official Crew Ambassador of Love Your Melon. “We all loved the mission of Love Your Melon and wanted to be a part of the organization. Part of their mission is to improve the lives of children battling cancer and engaging communities to make a difference.” Many college students want to make a difference in the community but don’t always know where to go or how to start.
Taylor and her team have set up a Facebook account that they can be reached by. They are looking for more members to join them that are just as passionate and dedicated as they are. “Once our crew becomes an organization, we will be able to personally bring the hats to the hospital ourselves,” which would be an amazing opportunity for the crew to personally experience how their efforts are impacting the kids battling cancer.
Until they become an official crew, they don’t have hats to sell here on campus. However, by going to the Love Your Melon website and at the point of purchase select “support a crew” and choose the UW-Stout Campus, those purchases will be marked towards the 100 hat goal the Stout Crew has.
“Another exciting event that we have the opportunity of providing is that Brian Keller is coming to Stout tomorrow, February 18, to speak about the Love Your Melon mission.” The event is hosted by the Stout Retail Association but is open for the whole campus and will begin at 6:30 pm in the JHSW Room 110 with hats available for sale at the end of the presentation.
*All photos were taken from the official Love Your Melon Facebook page.