Coalition Dance Party

In the past year, East’s Coalition Club has taken on many causes. They have held a bake sale to collect basic funds, raked leaves for the group Invisible Children and helped the foundation Love 146. But on Saturday, they did something they had never done before: they danced. And for a good cause.

From 2-10 p.m. on Saturday, Coalition held a dance marathon in the cafeteria to raise money for Partners in Health, an organization dedicated to treating people all over the world with preventable health issues like the flu, cold and HIV/AIDS. Partners in Health cooperates with poor communities and villages to fight poverty and diseases mostly in Latin America, Russia and sub-Saharan Africa. Their main focus is to help those who have been diagnosed with HIV and AIDS.

By working with each individual community, Partners in Health provides treatment for general medical conditions and also for more intense diseases such as AIDS and tuberculosis. They also strive to improve access to food, shelter, clean water, sanitation, education and other economic opportunities.

According to the club’s president, senior Sarah Are, Coalition was happy to collaborate with an organization that dealt with problems Coalition hadn’t yet worked on.

“We havent done a health care situation and its a huge issue,” Sarah said. “We thought it would be an exciting way to raise money. Something new. Something different.”

Not only was there dancing and donating on the part of Coalition members, but the Lancer Dancers helped entertain the crowd. But member Nathan Are thinks that the entire event was a success.

“[The dance] went really well,” said Nathan. “We were having so much fun and it was so exhausting but the mood was great, the decorations were great and it was overall great.”

Coalition took pledges from people every two hours. That meant that if someone pledged two dollars, for every hour they stayed at the dance, they’d donate two dollars to Partners in Health.

“Not as many people came as I wanted,” said Nathan. “but everyone that did come donated, which was amazing”

According to Sarah, $1,004.42 were collected at the marathon in donations from the Change for Change jar, an eight gallon water jug used by Coalition for money collections. Coalition is in the process of collecting pledge money and expects that money to substantially increase the total amount the dance marathon raised for Partners in Health.