A yellow and blue teeter-totter in Friendship Square moved up and down constantly for 48 hours in an annual effort to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
The University of Idaho’s Delta Delta Delta sorority hosted its annual Teeter-Totter-A-Thon, which lasted from noon on Friday until the same time Sunday to raise money for its national philanthropy. Last year the house raised $2,700 at the event, and this year’s total was just under $2,200.
McKenzie Carlson, a junior in the house, said four women signed up for each two-hour block. They spent about two weeks preparing for the event.
“We’ll have girls … that will paint the teeter-totter and paint the stand and everything,” Carlson said. “Usually a lot of our decorations we already have because every single year we always donate to St. Jude…”
Carlson said members of Tri-Delta collect money for St. Jude and ride the teeter-totter, but children and adults are also welcome to ride it. She said they’ve had people from 2 and 3 years old all the way to 50 or 60.
“Well what we do is we continuously ride the teeter-totter, you know non-stop noon Friday to noon Sunday,” she said.
All of the money collected from the event is donated to St. Jude to help fund research for childhood diseases, Carlson said.
“St. Jude is our national philanthropy so every single Tri-Delta in the nation raises money for St. Jude,” Carlson said. “We actually have goals, for example a couple years ago we had a $10 million in 10 years and we actually raised that in four. So we got six years ahead of schedule, which is really cool, so we bumped it up to 15 million, and so we’re going to raise an addition 15 million in another five years and see what we can do.”
On the national level, Tri-Delta has raised enough money to fund the construction of a wing specifically for research that is dedicated to the sorority, Carlson said. Even though there is a goal for the national sorority, she said members of the UI chapter don’t set a goal.
“It’s more of just getting the word out there and raising as much money as possible because we don’t want to set a limit on it and that kind of thing because we want to go the distance and see what we can do,” Carlson said.
She said Tri-Delta raises money for St. Jude throughout the year with smaller activities, but also a few other large events like a three-on-three basketball tournament called Tri-Hoop and Trick-or-Treat for Change on Halloween.