THON--Together Without LImits

This past weekend was truly incredible. 708 people standing on their feet for 46 hours straight, all to raise an amazing $9,563,016.09 FOR THE KIDS!! An enormous amount of work was done to make this event happen--from the overall committee and all the captains and committee members organizing the logistics of the weekend to the THON chairs working with their organizations to go on canning weekends throughout the year. Words can not describe the emotion felt when a child tells you that he does not want to survive his treatment, but rather he wants to live his life. The tears were streaming when a father was talking about is daughter, who lost her battle not to the brain cancer she originally had but to leukemia, a second cancer she had after she had already conquered the brain cancer. THON is a place where kids suffering from cancer and college students can be kids again. It was a weekend of water gun fights, balloons bouncing and soap bubbles popping. Congratulations to Penn State for raising so much money in the fight against Pediatric Cancer. Congratualations to Penn State Hillel for raising an amazing amount of money through our canning weekends and THONvelope letter campaign. Congratulations to our THON chairs, Brittany Musaffi and Naomi Silverman for doing so much work to make our fundraising efforts so successful. And finally, congratulations to Naomi Silverman and Meredith Devine for dancing their hearts out for 46 straight hours.

Here are some pictures to highlight the weekend:

The total revieled after 46 hours of THON in the BJC

Dancers Meredith and Naomi and I on the floor of the BJC during THON weekend

You Had Me at Hillel

Hillel Goes Speed Dating! and here's what participant Sarah H. said about the event:

Tonight was one of Hillel’s greatest social events of the year! The day after Valentine’s Day celebration was full of rose, balloons, candy and chocolate as the Hillel student board transformed the basement of Irvings bagel shop into a romance filled environment. Over the almost 3 hours of speed dating, I met about 40 different guys for mini-dates. There were a lot of familiar faces but many new people which was really exciting. All in all it was a great night of schmoozing and fun, I’m looking forward to seeing if any new couples start dating that met at tonight’s event.

It really was a fantastic event. The candlelit tables set the mood as 100 students filled the basement at Irvings to meet that nice Jewish boy or girl they've been looking for. As Sarah said, there were many familiar faces, but just as many if not more new faces! It's great to see so many students getting involved with Jewish life in a fun, social way. We're looking forward to making it an even greater success next year. Check out the story about the event in the Daily Collegian