Month: March 2018

Monika Baldwin moved to St. Petersburg, FL from Lithuania ten years ago. When she began her journey as a finance student at the University of Florida, she wasn’t quite sure where to begin.

“My sophomore year I rushed Kappa Delta, and everyone was talking about his thing called Dance Marathon,” Baldwin said. “I seriously thought it was a dance team, but once I learned more about it I knew it was something I had to immediately get involved with.”

She served as Kappa Delta’s delegate her first year involved and was a Dancer the following two. Baldwin is now the Social Media Director at TradePMR, a financial advising custodian here in Gainesville. She has visited DM at UF multiple times since her graduation, and has even discovered a new way to remember her time with the organization as a student.

“I went to the event last year after they re-did the O’Connell Center and noticed they put up a bunch of new pictures. As my husband and I were walking around, I found a shot from my junior year Dance Marathon. Everyone’s doing the line dance and you can actually see me in it,” Baldwin said.

As for the future, Baldwin hopes DM at UF continues to grow and inspire the Gainesville community.

“I encourage every local friend I have to donate, go to the event, wear the shirts, anything I can,” Baldwin said. “This organization is unforgettable. You guys work so hard to change lives; I know it changed mine.”

– Jenna Metcalf

Eileen Cullen, senior second year Morale Captain, has dedicated the past three years of her life to Dance Marathon.

Her freshman year she had no involvement in Dance Marathon, but this soon changed after she spent the summer going into her sophomore year being a camp counselor at a camp for kids with serious and life threatening illnesses in Central Florida.

This experience at camp is what sparked her passion for the kids.

Going into this camp, she had no idea the impact it would make on her life.  She was exposed to kids who just wanted to be normal kids, not kids who were defined by their illnesses.

One camper told her that at camp “I am a kid, not THAT kid.” This was one of Eileen’s many redefining moments. This made her realize that outside of camp kids can feel so defined by their illness.

Another moment at camp that has defined her DM journey is about a camper who called Luigi. This camper completely transformed into a courageous and fearless kid when he wore a Luigi costume all week. “He went from the kid who only hung out with his counselors, not the kids his age, to the kid who made 6 new friends by the end of the week because Luigi loved to talk to other kids,” she said.

Eileen works so diligently fundraising and as a Captain of Dance Marathon so all kids can feel the way her campers feel while they are at camp. She says programs like Arts in

Medicine and Child Life help the kids express themselves and normalize their experiences as much as possible.  These programs, which are generally fully funded by donations, are why she raises money for DM.

-Remi Storch