Centenary Bloggers

What is Up ‘Til Dawn?

So what is it? Up ‘Til Dawn is an organization on Centenary’s campus that consists of a group of people with a purpose. That’s every organization! So let me tell you what is COOL about this amazing organization.

St. Jude Children’s Reseach Hospital was founded in 1962 by Danny Thomas, who believed that “No child should die in the dawn of life.” Danny Thomas (or Amos Jacobs) was an entertainer. He was struggling in his life, and he prayed to Staint Jude Thaddeus, who is the Catholic patron saint of hopepless causes. Danny prayed “show me my way in life and I will build you a shrine.” When things started getting good for Danny he remembered his promise. He went to Memphis and said he wanted to build a children’s hospital. Memphis already had a children’s hospital, but they didn’t have a reseach center for catastrophic diseases, so that is what Danny built.

He asked his movie star friends for donations, and they helped him build his hospital.There have been so many advancements since Danny built his hospital. Acute lymphobloastic leukemia, or ALL, is the most common type of childhood cancer, and the survival rate has increased from 4% (in 1962) to 94%. That is truly amazing. St. Jude shares all their information, to try to help all the children of the world.

Now here is the cool part: St. Jude Children’s Research hospital treats children at absolutely no cost to their families. When a family walks in to the hospital with their sick child, they are told not to worry about the money, and that it is all taken care of. St. Jude takes about $1 million dollars to run per day, so they need support to keep them running.

This is where we come in: Up ‘Til Dawn is an organization that raises money for the children at St. Jude to make sure that they never have to pay a cent to get the treatment they need. What do you need to do to get involved? You should gather a list of addresses for at least 35 friends and family. At the Up ‘Til Dawn Event, we will provide you with letters that you can write to those people that you know asking them to send a donation to St. Jude. We have been able to raise a lot of money this way, and we really need to continue raising more money!

At the seminar that I just got back from, I learned all kinds of new programming ideas. Get excited because this is going to be a really good year for Centenary’s Up ‘Til Dawn, and we are going to set a high goal! If you’d like more information, just shoot me an email (skompell@my.centenary.edu).

I hope you enjoy the pictures and videos that I posted!