Students decorated capes for children at Prisma Health Children's Hospital for Dance Mararthon's Carolina Heroes event on Thursday. The event was a Homecoming Week service project.
"We decided to pair up with Dance Marathon this year because they are in Gamecock Entertainment with us, and we really love their cause, and we just want to donate to a bigger cause and change up our service event this year," Caroline Fruehauf, a fourth-year public health student, said. "Dance Marathon offered it to us, and so we just took it and ran with it."
Members from different organizations came out to decorate a cape for a child in the hospital, using their creativity and craft supplies. Fruehauf and Austin Smith, a fourth-year finance and marketing student, organized the event and planned it for Homecoming.
"One thing for Homecoming is we've always thought it was really important to have a service aspect to it because it is not only representing the Carolina community, but how do you give back to the greater Columbia community," Austin Smith said. "Bringing in Dance Marathon and doing a service component with them is really giving back to the community by decorating these capes that's gonna to go to the hospital for the children."
Josie Smith, a first-year biomedical student, was one of the students who decorated a cape for her organization, Chi Omega.
"I love just being able to get more involved and stuff, because I definitely think as a freshman, I don't know as much but as I get older I want to help apply myself more," Josie Smith said.
Drew Blocker, a third-year elementary education student, is the vice president of community relations for Dance Marathon.
"Each of the organizations participating in the homecoming event, most of them signed up to donate a toy or clothes or some type of item to go to hospitals so they can give that to families that are staying there," Fruehauf said.
All the capes created by the organizations will be taken to the hospital to help decorate the playroom.
"The capes are gonna be hanging up in the playrooms on each floor of the hospital, which is just like a really fun area for the kids to go," Blocker said. "There are gaming systems in there, that's where our Dance Marathon staff will go there when we have our craft days, so it will just be a fun decoration to have there along with the donations that we're getting today. The majority of them are toys, so it will be more things for the kids to play with."