For the first time ever, one of Keene State College’s Love Your Melon crew members will be attending a national conference.
Junior and nursing major Olivia Teixeira has been selected from hundreds of applicants to be one of the lucky crew members to be attending the conference in Utah next month.
According to sophomore and communication major Abby Donovan, who is the head of public relations for the crew at KSC, Love Your Melon is a student run organization across the country that has a mission of giving a knit hat to every child with cancer in the U.S.
Teixeira said that she is a member for the crew on campus.
“I help promote the organization through social media and when they have new releases, promotions or new products we hear from our leader. The ones who run the crew tell us crew members and then they usually post on the Keene State page and we will retweet it, repost it or we’ll post our own things and we just encourage people to click Keene State Love Your Melon Crew when they check out online,” Teixeira said.
Teixeira said that the trip is fully paid for and will take place the week before spring break.
Photo from Olivia Teixeira’s Facebook Page
When explaining the conference, Teixeira said that it is an APEX Love Your Melon contest winning conference.
To participate in the contest, Teixeira said, “The national organization sent it out a couple months ago and you had to answer one of their two essay questions. I answered how I would want to change the world. It was a brief email explaining your own opinion and, out of everyone they got emails from, they picked the top 160 essays that they liked.”
Teixeira said that the organization sent out a brief email broadly going over the things that they would be doing.
”I’ll be meeting with the founders of the organization and all of the higher ups in the business. I’ll be seeing how we can really promote the brand and the company along with what we can do in the future,” Teixeira said.
Teixeira said she is very excited for the conference.
“I am definitely nervous but more excited than anything cause I’ll be doing fun things and talking to people who really run the business. I’m excited to have a voice and give input to the up and coming products,” Teixera said.
Teixeira said she is apart of Love Your Melon at KSC because she thinks the organization has a really good mission.
She added, “To be honest I really want to work with kids with cancer when I am out of school. I plan to be a pediatric oncology nurse so it fits into my own morals and what I want to promote personally.”
Donovan said that the whole crew will benefit from Teixeira going to the conference.
“The whole point of the conference is to bring members of different crews together to share ideas about how to improve Love Your Melon as a whole, as well as each individual crew. By Liv attending this and learning how other crews spread the word about Love Your Melon we can improve our own crew and bring us closer together,” she said.
Donovan added that Teixeira brings so much happiness to the crew.
“She is always there for anyone who needs someone to talk to, as well as bringing great ideas for events for us to hold on campus.”
Sophomore and double major with communication and management Tara Doherty, who is captain of the crew, said she is very excited and proud of Teixeira for attending the conference.
Doherty said, “She deserves to experience this amazing opportunity.”
Doherty added that Teixeira is “a genuinely awesome person.”
Doherty said she only recently met Teixeira, but that it didn’t take her long to see her character.
“She’s one of those people that definitely sees the good in every situation she’s in and everyone she meets,” Doherty said.
Emma Hamilton can be contacted at ehamilton@kscequinox.com
