Fact of the Week: $15 prevents transmission

Did you know?

It costs just $15 to reach one woman with the services she needs to prevent HIV transmission to her child.

Most (90 percent) of the children infected with HIV every day receive the virus from their mothers. Half of these children die before their second birthdays because they do not have access to the treatment they need.

Two ways HIV/AIDS can be prevented include mother to unborn baby and through breast milk.

Organizations like the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, one of the causes we raise money for, works to prevent mother-to-child transmission in several ways.

1. EGPAF tests pregnant women for HIV and counsels them to make sure they have access to prevention, care and safe treatment.
2. They provide antiretroviral medicines to women who test HIV-positive and their babies to reduce the risk of transmission.
3. EGPAF also provides these services to breastfeeding mothers.

For about the same price as a meal at the BU dining hall, you can save one child from receiving HIV from his or her mother.

Click here to learn more about EGPAF's transmission prevention program.

"Around the World in 18 Hours!"

Yesterday, we had the DM11' Chair Retreat and we're all so excited to bring you the best Dance Marathon that Boston University has seen! It was such a great bonding experience, but we also jumped right into getting everyone on track and generating new ideas for the upcoming Dance Marathon. All the chairs are definitely ready to work hard to make DM11' a success. Not to mention, we were really surprised by all the creative ideas and input that the chairs had about different fundraisers and entertainment!

Aside from the great progress of the retreat, we wanted to give a special thank you to Rachel Hinger from the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation and Lena from One Heartland for stopping by and sharing their stories about their organizations and experiences. We appreciate all the advice they have given us and it was great to meet both of them! We look forward to seeing them in the near future!

Finally, the most exciting news is that we've chosen the theme for DM11'! After much consideration, we decided it would be "Around the World in 18 Hours!" That means we'll be taking you on a trip to different countries to experience the various cultures of the world. Because Pediatric HIV/AIDS is affecting numerous children across the globe, we wanted to bring everyone together for a night of celebrating and unity for one great cause! So pack your bags and come with us on an 18-hour journey that you'll never forget!

Check out some pictures of us brainstorming new ideas at the retreat!







DM Love,
Steph, Maggie, & Eric

We're Already Making a SPLASH!

To all the freshmen, welcome to the BU community! We held a table at SPLASH earlier this week and it went really well! Thank you to everyone who helped make it such a success. We were excited to see all the new, eager faces and we definitely hope all of you will be attending Dance Marathon 11' in the spring. We received numerous contacts and emails from a lot of interested people so we have a feeling this year is going to be BIG! We'll email everyone who signed up in a couple of days so get ready to hear from us!

Until then, you guys still have a chance to sign up on our contact list by sending us an email to budm@bu.edu or come check us out at the Student Activities Expo on September 15, 2010 from 3-7PM. We'll be handing out our infamous condoms labeled with "I can do it for 18 hours" and also some free t-shirts!

Keep the emails coming!



DMLove,
Steph, Maggie, & Eric

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!

So what's our big change for DM2011?

As you may know, in the past we've always had teams of 8 or more dancers as well as individual dancers. Well this year we're keeping the teams of 8 or more, but we're also creating teams for individual dancers!

Anyone who signs up on their own will be placed on a team with other individual dancers and will have one of our team captains - Katie & Becca are two of our team captains right now! - as their team captain! The dancer teams will then get together a few times before DM to plan out outfits for theme hours and anything else they may want to bring!

We still welcome you to sign up with 8 or more of your friends and have your own team! Or to come for a few hours as a moraler to support all of our dancers!

But what happens if you want to sign up with just one or two of your friends? No worries! We will put you all on the same team of individual dancers!

There will be a lot more team competitions this year so get ready!

See you at Splash on August 29th!


Steph, Maggie, & Eric
DM Overall Chairs

Drum Roll Please....

Hey DMers!
We know it's been a while since our last post! We've been busy doing some behind-the-scenes work in order to get everything ready for September, but more importantly for BU's SPLASH on August 29th! For those of you who aren't familiar with the event, Splash is Boston University's biggest activities expo that takes place every year after freshmen matriculation. This year Splash will be on Sunday the 29th at 2pm at Nickerson Field so be sure to stop by our table and check out what we've been working on- trust us, you won't want to miss our giveaways!

In other news we also wanted to take this opportunity to introduce you to the whole crew!
Here are our Dance Marathon 2011 Chairs:
Jen Aller - Dancer Relations
Michelle Markle - Dancer Relations
Katrina Ballard - Charity Relations & Education
Emily Shapero - Morale & Volunteer
Lissette Martinez - Entertainment
Brian Bornstein - Finance
Maggie Tittler - Fundraising
Nicole Warren - Fundraising
Danielle Letayf - Operations
Laura Hennemuth - Public Relations & Advertising
Riz Seeham - Web & Social Media and Public Relations & Advertising
Lindsay Vozar - Sponsorship
Laura Leahy - Sponsorship


We also want to welcome our two new Team Captains Becca Crossen and Katie Aller. This position is brand new this year and we'll be blogging about it later in the week to let you know what one of our big changes for DM is going to be so check back soon!

Show 'em some love

Hey DMers!

First off thanks to everyone who applied to be a chair for DM2011, we're currently reviewing the applications and will be scheduling interviews shortly.

We also just wanted to encourage everyone to take just 30 seconds to vote for Fighting Friday to open for KISS. Fighting Friday is one of our favorite bands at DM. They've performed almost every year (previously as Moonshine) and have been so encouraging during our 18 hours of dancing. The energy their band gives off is a HUGE motivation right about half way through the night. So if you have just a minute, do them a favor, show them some DM love and Click here to vote. Also if you want to check out their new promo video so you can remember just how awesome they were here's the link: Fighting Friday Promo Video

Thanks!

DMLove,

Steph, Maggie, & Eric

You know you want to....be a DM11 Chair!

Now that Memorial Day has passed, it is officially summer and beach season. Before you start working on your tan this weekend, we think that you should all fill out a Dance Marathon Chair application! We know how busy finals, moving, and starting new internships and jobs can be, which is why we've extended the 2011 Dance Marathon application deadline another week! The new deadline is Monday, June 7th, 2010. We have been brainstorming up some great ideas for next year, but we need your help! To find out more information about BUDM, visit the website at people.bu.edu/budm.

We've been updating it recently so there is new information about what happens at Dance Marathon as well as a link to download the chair applications. Of course if you have any questions at all, please email us at budm@bu.edu and we will be more than happy to provide more info!

We hope to hear from you soon!!

DMLove,
Steph, Maggie & Eric

Volunteering at Camp Heartland

Hey DMers!

We recently received an e-mail from Elisa Adair at One Heartland letting us know about opportunities to volunteer at Camp Heartland this summer. We've posted the Summer Volunteer Application on our website at http://people.bu.edu/budm but it's also available on the One Heartland website http://oneheartland.org/
If you are interested in getting involved all you have to do is fill out the form and turn it in.

Here's a little message from Elise about camp:
We’d love to have each and every one of you see how your hard work pays off for children impacted by HIV/AIDS at Camp this summer. I’ll be sure to send you all a bunch of pictures too so anyone who can’t make it can check them out.

Hope everyone's off to a sweet summer so far!
DMLove,
Steph, Maggie & Eric

Chair Applications

Hey everyone!!

Wow!! It seems like Dance Marathon 2010 has just ended, but we are already planning DANCE MARATHON 2011!!!! And we want your help! If you don't already know us, we're Steph, Maggie, & Eric - and we are the overall chairs for the upcoming year. We couldn't be more excited!

Dance Marathon is the largest fundraiser at Boston University and we have big plans to make next year even bigger and better! We certainly can't do this alone, and would like to invite you to become a DANCE MARATHON CHAIR.

Dance Marathon will be held on Saturday, April 2^nd and Sunday April 3^rd, 2011 and we're looking for dedicated DMers such as you to help us put together the best Dance Marathon BU has ever seen! To find out more about our DM2011 Chair Application please e-mail us at budm@bu.edu

DMlove,

Steph Gonzalez, Maggie Abbate, & Eric Si