Day 360: Relay for Life-Let's Wrap it Up!

Hey everyone, Bianca here. Well, it's finally about time for Relay (FINALLY!!!). With just 12 days left, we have already committed 589 participants, 98 teams, and have raised $26,600. This entire week, MArch 19-23rd, is our annual Paint the Campus Purple Week, which is a huge Relay awareness and fundraising week before the actual event. It is great to see this week finally coming into place, because it has been so stressful to plan! I have been coordinating with individual team captains to host fundraisers during the week. The idea is that we would have at least one team hosting a fundraiser, or at least participating in a Relay-awareness activity, each day of the week. Hopefully this will encourage more people to donate and register, as we are still pretty far behind our $125,000 goal. I have attached a picture of the schedule of events for this week.

In preparation of this week, we wrapped the entire campus in purple. Streamers, balloons, posters, banners, etc in order to spread awareness. We also put little flags all over college green, so those who want to sit on the grass to do homework have no choice but to acknowledge them! Unfortunately, the chalk had wiped off Locust Walk pretty fast, but most of our decoration stayed. My camera's memory card is for some reason not registering in my computer, but you can imagine a campus painted purple!

This week I am also contacting all of the team captains to coordinate fundraisers for the day of the event as well as contacting performing arts groups to provide entertainment. We already have a lot of responses, which will hopefully attract a lot more students!

Not only is Relay important to me because it is a night when I honor those loved ones who I have lost to cancer (Marie, Papa, Great Aunt Charlotte and Aunt Dianne from Portland, and many others), but there is another recent influence in my life who I would like to celebrate at this event. Upon coming to UPenn Nursing, I was awarded the Melissa Sengbusch Inspirational Scholarship. Melissa Marie Sengbusch was a young woman who was diagnosed with cancer just before her enrollment in the School of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania. Sadly, after a courageous battle, she died from her cancer when she was nineteen years old. Her parents, the scholarship sponsors, wanted to honor Melissa's legacy at UPenn and have founded a scholarship in her name. Each year, they award a member of the incoming freshman class with this scholarship.

After hearing Melissa's story of dedication and courage, and after meeting her parents (who I truly consider members of my family even after only meeting them three times), I am going to honor Melissa at this year's Relay for Life. I will be posting her picture, along with pictures of Auntie Marie and Papa, in the slide show when we are honoring those that we have lost. If possible, I will also be speaking on behalf of Melissa and her parents to share her inspiring story with the Penn community. Although I cannot possibly begin to explain every remarkable experience of Melissa's journey, I have posted a link below that explains her scholarship and provides insight into her incredible story.

After putting in so much time and hard work over the past eight months, I am really looking forward for Relay to finally happen and see the campus come together to support the disease that affects so many, as well as taking a moment to celebrate Marie, Papa, Great Aunts Charlotte and Dianne, and Upenn's Melissa, who will always be in my heart.

http://www.melissaslivinglegacy.org/about/story.html