LEAP for Africa cancelled its scheduled dodgeball tournament scheduled for Sunday, March 11 due to lack of participating teams. The club has, however, successfully held fundraisers before.
The dodgeball tournament was originally supposed to have individual teams sign up with a $25 entry fee and compete to win a prize provided by the club for the victors. Yet not enough teams signed up, so the event had to be cancelled.
Senior Maggie Madden said, “Like any other club trying to raise money at Central, we have competition.”
Ms. Kalafut, the club’s sponsor, said, “The club tries to do all kinds of fun things, things that have worked in the past and things that they think will be popular, so we’re trying.”
The club’s purpose is to raise money for building and maintaining schools in Africa, and it hosts several fundraisers each year. The club meets every Friday morning at 7:20 and is a relatively small club of about 20 or 25 people. The club is continually focused on raising money for children in Africa. “It’s a fun challenge for us to come up with different ways of raising money for the schools in Africa,” Madden said.
The club has also started expanding their events beyond just Central students. Junior club member Gretta Richter said, “We have started to do events involving the community and elementary schools because a challenge we have started to face was student participation.”
With so many clubs at Central, many have to volley for student interest, and much of that has to do with the tradition and popularity of the club. Richter said, “So many Central students are involved in many things and are dedicated to their cause, and we have discovered that it has become overwhelming to many students to participate in a lot of fundraisers.”
LEAP’s next event will be a charity auction on April 15 in downtown Westmont, where various items from sports tickets to vacations can be bid on to raise money for the cause. Richter said, “Last year the auction was very successful, and we hope for the same turn out this year.”
