{"id":4754,"date":"2021-04-20T12:30:52","date_gmt":"2021-04-20T18:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spectator.cuchicago.edu\/?p=4754"},"modified":"2021-04-20T12:30:52","modified_gmt":"2021-04-20T18:30:52","slug":"concordia-university-dance-marathon-parties-for-the-kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spectator.cuchicago.edu\/?p=4754","title":{"rendered":"Concordia University Dance Marathon Parties \u2018For The Kids\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A party was clearly happening on campus, as music flowed out from the South Gym doors into the open Saturday night air.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Concordia University Dance Marathon hosted their annual event on March 27, 2021, after the culmination of their year-long fundraising campaign. From 6 p.m. to midnight, nearly one hundred dancers were continuously dancing and raising more money before the final announcement of the grand total amount of money raised in the 2020-2021 academic year.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cConcordia University Dance Marathon specifically supports Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children\u2019s Hospital in downtown Chicago,\u201d said junior Jesse Muehler, executive director of CUDM. \u201cAll the money we raise goes straight to the hospital, to help them provide uncompensated care, support services and other things like that for both the children and families that they serve.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Concordia University Dance Marathon\u2019s motto is \u201cFor The Kids,\u201d often seen abbreviated as FTK. Kayla McCloud, now a senior at Concordia University Chicago, was one of the kids who has received care from Lurie Children\u2019s Hospital. After injuring her elbow and spine while playing basketball at the age of 13, it was the team of doctors at Lurie\u2019s that helped her pull through and succeed beyond her injuries.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI was seeing a lot of different doctors at a bunch of hospitals in the Chicagoland area, including Loyola Children’s Hospital and Shriner’s\u00a0Children’s Hospital,\u201d McCloud said. \u201cBut it wasn’t until\u00a0I started seeing a team of doctors at Lurie’s that I started to see legit improvements. I was able to have my final elbow and brain surgery at Lurie’s after having multiple doctors team up to find out the best course of action. The doctors I had at Lurie’s gave me hope to have a normal adulthood, after missing most of my teenage years.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This year was McCloud\u2019s fourth year speaking at the Big Event, sharing her story and how Lurie Children\u2019s Hospital has helped her.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBeing able to share my experience and have a platform such as CUDM\u2026 it makes me so happy\u2026 It leaves me speechless,\u201d McCloud said. \u201c[CUDM] has been so great for me. \u2026 Every year it\u2019s gotten bigger and it\u2019s gotten more people involved, I see new faces every year. It makes me feel great that we have these events where more people are learning about the great things that Lurie\u2019s has done, not just for me but for every other kid who\u2019s gone through tough times and Lurie\u2019s been there, helped them through it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As it is with everything in the last year, CUDM had to change their strategy for fundraising and ultimately, their approach on how to have the event itself. With COVID protocols, CUDM had to limit how many dancers they had in the room at one time, so they divided the dancers into two shifts to allow for more spacing and keep the total occupancy down. But CUDM had seen other changes before ever reaching this event.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cA majority of CUDM has been word of mouth for the past 4 years, but this year we weren\u2019t there to have face to face interactions with our dancers, with our students, faculty and staff at Concordia,\u201d said Muehler. \u201cBut the executive team that I had, they crushed all my expectations.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe sort of had to be realistic about what COVID has brought on,\u201d said Dean of Students Kathy Gebhardt, who is also the CUDM faculty advisor. \u201cSurprisingly, we\u2019ve done okay\u2014we had a good year.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

CUDM raised $20,407.49 for the 2020-2021 academic year, which is almost $400 more than last year.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If you\u2019d like to keep up with what Concordia Dance Marathon is up to, check them out on Instagram @<\/span>concordiaudm<\/span><\/a>, or via <\/span>Children\u2019s Miracle Network Hospitals<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":4756,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-life","category-life-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spectator.cuchicago.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spectator.cuchicago.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spectator.cuchicago.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spectator.cuchicago.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spectator.cuchicago.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spectator.cuchicago.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4754\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spectator.cuchicago.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spectator.cuchicago.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spectator.cuchicago.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spectator.cuchicago.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}