What had brought us all together was a social for patients at the Children's Hospital organized by one of the best-managed, most-effective student organizations on campus: the Dance Marathon.
Over the past four years, the marathon has raised more than $330,000 to help families with children being treated at the UNC Children's Hospital. A sick child can put families under incredible emotional and financial stress. Huge medical bills need to be paid at the same time breadwinners are forced to take time off from work to be with their children.
Money raised by the marathon goes to relieving this stress by paying families' non-medical bills and by purchasing additional things to make their lives easier. For example, Dance Marathon money has gone to everything from keeping a family's home from being repossessed to fulfilling a patient's wish of receiving a cotton candy machine for Christmas.
UNC's marathon is only the manifestation of a much larger trend rippling across the nation. Since 1973, when the first dance marathon was organized at Penn State, the number of college dance marathons raising money for children's charities has exploded. I was able to find more than 50 of them online in less than 10 minutes.
However, the success of the marathon phenomenon is indicative of a more significant national trend. Young people have become increasingly willing to devote their time to private charities but less willing to work for political solutions to the problems that their charities address.
While it's wonderful that 577 college students last February were willing to stand on their feet for 24 hours to raise money for the kids, it's disappointing that it's not as easy to rally that many students to fight for the kids' interests in the political arena.
Money raised by our Dance Marathon is so dearly needed for a reason: The state of child welfare in North Carolina is deplorable. The most recent data from the Census Bureau shows that roughly one in five children in North Carolina live beneath the federal poverty line.
Gregory Malhoit, former director of the N.C. Center for Justice and Community Development, wrote in 1998 that one in eight N.C. children experience extended periods of hunger, which makes them more susceptible to illness.
The Child Welfare League of America reports that 14 percent of children in North Carolina have no health insurance. Parents of children without insurance normally are unable to afford preventative care and put off seeking health care until absolutely necessary, only giving their children's illnesses time to worsen.
