HootaThon Celebrates Child Health Day

BY IRISH HAINES

HootaThon presented Child Health Day to raise awareness on how to protect and develop children’s health.

HootaThon celebrated their second year of engagement with Temple.

Outside the Howard Gittis Student Center, HootaThon had tables and volunteers handing out lollipops and fact sheets that focused on child health via The Children Hospital of Philadelphia statistics.

Senior Nursing student, Ariela Kogan, was one of the volunteers outside.

“Today we’re celebrating Child Health Day, it’s worldwide,” Kogan said.  “We’re just celebrating the kids that are lucky enough to be healthy and enjoy their childhood and raise awareness for the kids that are in the hospital and don’t have the same opportunity…We’re handing out lollipops because they’re like a little staple of childhood.”

Students were able to learn more about the day while participating in child-like activities such as personalizing capes, playing board games, and listening to music.

Senior Director of External Affairs Alyssa Laufer explained what they intended to achieve for the day.

“Our goal today is strictly just to spread awareness, even though we are a fundraising organization,” Laufer said. “The goal today was just kinda have fun, be a kid, spread awareness about child health. Any donations that came out of that would be great but that wasn’t the focus of the day.”

If students were not able to attend the event physically, the organization also has an ongoing campaign on social media.

To donate or get involved, visit HootaThon’s site here.

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