Saddleback College brings Dance Against Cancer to campus for the first time

Saddleback College students are putting on their dancing shoes for the May 2 event Dance Against Cancer, a 10-hour dance-a-thon starting at 9 a.m. in the Student Services Center quad.

Dance Against Cancer is an Associated Student Government sponsored event and is free to enter. Students can create teams of any size and choose to fundraise for Be The Match, a bone marrow registry, and St. Baldrick’s Foundation, a charity focusing on cancer research for children.

“This has never been done before on our campus but other campuses have done it and been wildly successful. Other school’s have raised in the millions,” Senior Administrative Assistant Erin Long of Student Development said.

More than $10,000 has been raised so far and Student Development is hopeful that amount will climb. Teams of dancers fundraise independently and may raise money however they see fit. Long suggests utilizing the campus community and students’ own personal community and network. Donations are made through the charities’ websites under each team’s I.D. number.

A poster for Dance Against Cancer in the Gaucho lounge tells students how to sign-up for the event.

Irvine Valley College students Paula Baniqued, 22, and Pooja Patel, 22—both interns at Be The Match—came to Saddleback campus to raise awareness for the foundation.

“This is our first event here. Be The Match is a bone marrow registry in the National Marrow Donation Program. We work to widen the registry and match patients with donors. First we look to the family and if that doesn’t work out we look for ethnicity,” Baniqued said.

Patel explained typical marrow donors are 18-44 years-old due to younger marrow being more successful in transplants. Donors fall off the registry at 61-years-old so the registry is constantly aging.

“There is only something like a million people on the bone marrow registry so it’s hard to find a match,” Erin Long said.

There will be a D.J. and contestants have the opportunity to win prizes for best costume, best dancer and highest fundraising amount. GD Bro (Globally Delicious) food truck will be there serving hamburgers.

For more information visit:
http://www.saddleback.edu/studentdevelopment/dance-against-cancer

For information on the charities visit:
http://www.stbaldricks.org
http://bethematch.org

Participants may choose between Be The Match bone marrow registry or St. Baldrick’s pediatric cancer research charity.

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