It's time to fill you in on the awesome weekend I spent in Hersey, PA with Jenna, John and Justin! The Youth Summit was held to bring together Pennsylvania Student Advocates involved with Relay For Life and Colleges Against Cancer for a weekend of fun, education and networking. For those of you who may not be familiar with Relay For Life, it is a program in which people come together and raise awareness for the fight against cancer. Through fundraising and networking, individual programs raise money for cancer research. The theme of the event was Pirates of the CUREabbean. It was extremely fun and I had the opportunity to meet with students from other colleges and high schools to discuss their Relay For Life events and to brainstorm for new ideas.

I learned so much from the sessions I sat in on. We discussed team recruiting strategies, fundraising tips, event development, and survivorship. My favorite session was Survivorship because we discussed various ways to get cancer survivors involved with our Relay For Life events. I have so much information to go through in order to get organized for Mount Aloysius's upcoming Relay events. We will be holding our Relay Kickoff this upcoming week and I can't wait for things to get underway.

We also had an opportunity to hang out and have fun with the new friends we had made. Justin and I competed in a dance contest and learned how to do the Tootsie Roll. :o) We both won Colleges Against Cancer backpacks! We also attended a concert by Chad Mackey, an upcoming musician who raises money, through his CD sales, for the American Cancer Society because a close friend of his lost her battle with childhood cancer. And of course, we had plenty of time to eat CHOCOLATE!!! We stayed at the Hershey Lodge and even the soap smelled like chocolate! :o)

It was definitely a memorable and very successful weekend and each of us Mounties were excited to be a part of the event!!!

Laura