By: Savannah Halle
Lindsay Fortier (‘26), who is majoring in Secondary Education and Spanish, along with minoring in Peace and Justice and Women and Gender Studies, took on the hefty task of leading this year’s Miracle Day at SNC. Miracle Day is the main event for Dance Marathon, a student club and organization on campus. Though it’s not just a fundraising organization at SNC. It is also an organization present at countless schools and universities around the nation. The goal of both the club and the event is to raise money for the local children’s hospitals in their area. Miracle Day welcomes the community and students to play games, give money if able, and hear stories from families who have a history with the children’s hospital, and their own (or child’s) health miracle. Lindsay has previously been involved with this organization in high school, but has also been a member during her time at SNC, including being co-president with her good friend, Taylor Lau. Linday’s favorite part of the club is meeting the local Miracle Families that we support and hearing their stories. She enjoys making connections and putting faces to the names of the people that our organization impacts.
Putting Miracle Day together was stressful, especially setting up, but she said that it wouldn’t have been possible without the members of the club and the additional help of the SNC Dance Team! Lindsay also mentions how, although there was plenty of stress, the process is also incredibly beautiful and rewarding. Putting it all together is an abundance of work, but remembering the reason why she was doing it in the first place made it so much more special and easier to work through the bumps in the road. Throughout the years, the Honors Program helped Lindsay learn time management between extracurriculars and all of her academics. Making sure studying and homework are the priority allows her to give her full attention to the organization once her academics are completed. Additionally, the program provided her with the community on campus to make Miracle Day such a success. She had many classmates from the program and ex-Bergstrom residents come and support the event, as well as many of her current residents (as a Bergstrom RA) joined the organization as well. Looking toward the future, Lindsay hopes to increase the monetary goal that the group fundraisers. Last year the group raised $5,000, this year they raised $16,000, and next year she plans to set a fundraising goal of $20,000! This on-campus organization makes a direct impact with local families in their time of need, and aims to reduce any financial stress in their lives, as their lives in and out of the children’s hospital are stressful enough. Lindsay urges anyone on campus to consider joining Dance Marathon in the future, as there is no time like the present to make a change.
