West Morris Central and Mendahm have a combined Relay for Life club. Relay for Life is a cancer charity walk that lasts all night, to raise money for patient recovery, research, and more through the American Cancer Society. West Morris Central works alongside West Morris Mendham to help raise money throughout the year with different events and fundraisers.
This year, there is a new student lead, Melanie Busch. Busch says “As the Fund the Mission Lead at Central, my main goal is to focus on sponsorship, fundraising, and things in that category. So far as a lead, I have conducted interviews for committee members with my other two leads (Radha Pilli and Owen McCoy), attended a few meetings, helped set up the majority of Fall Fest, and more.”
Relay for Life holds many events: “Some of our main activities that RFL does with WMC would be the actual Relay for Life event at the end of the year, Kickoff Week, Fall Fest, Coffee House, and more.” Busch explains.
As for what to expect this coming year, Busch hopes “to introduce new events, we definitely plan on having the Coffee House in December which takes place at a church and is a night of music, food, and games. We host Fall Fest, but that is usually targeted at elementary school-age kids and we have a bake sale, Halloween movies, crafts, and games. We also have Kickoff Week, which is like a big spirit week but led by Relay for Life later in the year to get everyone at school interested in Relay. Of course, we also have the Relay for Life Event which is at Central this year. The actual event happens at the beginning of June/end of May and it is a 12-hour event where people from both communities go to the track to stay up all night doing activities, ceremonies, and more all in the hopes of helping cancer patients and caretakers and finding a cure.”
Relay for Life has always been a very successful club, Last year the club- – “raised $62,177.66 in income and $1,100 in sponsorship.” Busch also explains “We also had 652 participants, 84 teams, and 22 survivors that attended the end-of-year event.”
For this year, Busch writes that “our goals are $80,000 in income and $1,750 in sponsorship. We also hope to have 800 participants, 85 teams, and 25 survivors.”