Story by Hannah Mitchell and Jaylene Ferrabelo
More than 10 million kids enter a children’s hospital every year. South Windsor For The Kids is an annual 4 hour dance marathon to raise money for Connecticut Children’s Medical Center.South Windsor High School Seniors Katelyn Hunter and Rachel Violette were in charge of theevent this year.
“We really thought about how we wanted to beat our goal of $7,000 from last year and wethought about having more fundraising teams and have even more fundraisers at different
places so like sports games, concerts and plays, restaurants, and canning at grocery stores,and then from there we just kept coming up with more ideas to fundraise like eventually gettingto the ‘Flames For Hope’ and selling T-shirts and stuff like that. So our big idea was how tofundraise and how to do it more effectively,” said Violette.
Drayton Brindisi was a patient at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center when he was born 4months early and fighting to survive. His father Andrew Brindisi who is also a Math Teacher atthe high school believes the hospital and fundraisers like these saved his son's life.
“Well Drayton wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for everything Connecticut Children’s Medical Centerhas done for him and our family. He really is a miracle but we like to call it the ‘Connecticut Children’s Miracle Center’ because they do them every day,” said Brindisi.
Shemar Williams, also a former patient at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center realizes the importance of fundraising and says he has a lot to be grateful for.
“I’m really glad to be here, I love all these people that come and raise money for the hospitaland everything that we do, and yeah I’m really thankful for it.” said Williams.
The club raised over $11,000 making this the most successful South Windsor For The Kids yet.
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