Mavathon helps miracles happen

Last Saturday, Greek Life hosted a Dance Marathon (Mavathon) at Minnesota State. Mavathon is a student-led event that raises funds for sick and injured kids in local hospitals.

“Mavathon is Mankato’s Dance Marathon, and it’s a year-round fundraising event that we do,” said the president of Greek Life, Alyssa Makalah. “All of our proceeds go to Gillette Children’s Hospital.”

The cost of tickets for the Mavathon was $20. 

“All the money goes towards them to help them pay for their hospital stays and any visits they have with doctors, clinicians and the surgeries they’ll have,” said fundraising chair Emma Gilbert.

During the event, attendees participated in a raffle for prizes, received free caricatures and had dinner. Makalah said there was a lot of dancing and no sitting.

“It was very exciting to work with the families but also feel it in your heart that we were doing something for the greater good,” said Gilbert. “A lot of like hard work was put into this event, and it took us many months to get it together just for this one day and get all the money to the families, but it was really fun and it was worth it.”

The family relations coordinator, Kayla Polanco, said she found families at Gillette’s who told their stories for the Mavathon. She said it was interesting to work directly with families for the fundraising event.

“They have to get cleared with a team first before they can decide if they want to participate,” said Polanco. “And the two families that we got were really interested right away, and so I had been emailing them back and forth, and we ended up doing a Zoom call with them. We interviewed them and got to hear their stories and both of them have incredibly touching stories and got to share that with everybody.”

This year, Mavathon was held for the first time in three years, during which COVID limitations were in power. Makalah said the turnout was better than they expected. Mavathon sold over 100 tickets this year. The Mavathon team announced they had raised $8,407, which was larger than they originally estimated.

According to Polanco, this event is very important. 

“Gillette’s makes miracles happen,” said Polanco. “We had a family come and they were explaining that their daughter had three months to live. They were keeping her comfortable until she was gonna pass away. And someone mentioned Gillette’s, so they went and they curated a team for her and that was when she was two and now I think she’s turning nine.”

Header photo: Greek Life hosted a Dance Marathon at Minnesota State in the Centennial Student Union. Mavathon is a student-led event injured kids in local hospitals. (Dylan Long/The Reporter)

Write to Amalia Sharaf at Amal.Sharafkhodjaeva@mnsu.edu