As the semester winds down, KSC’s collegiate chapter of the National Association for Music Education (NAfME) is spreading holiday season cheer through its candy cane fundraiser for leukemia cure research.
Throughout the week, KSC’s NAfME tabled in the Redfern Arts Center lobby. For $1, students could send a candy cane gram with a custom message to any of their friends or professors.
All of the proceeds from the sale will be donated to support the research to find a cure for leukemia.
Sophomore Hailey Taylor, vice president of NAfME, spoke about the organization and the work they do at KSC, saying, “We focus a lot on music educators and going to conferences and professional development days, giving people more opportunities to get out there and network.”
According to Taylor, this specific event and the cause it supports means something to the music department as a whole.
“There’s been a few recent deaths in the industry with people who are adjacent to the department. With things like this, we wanted to give people an opportunity to share the love within the department,” Taylor said. “It’s kind of a double hitter, we get to form a bigger sense of community within the department but also give back.”
According to Associate Professor of Music Dr. John Hart, who is the advisor of KSC’s NAfME chapter, almost all of NAfME’s fundraisers have charity components, and each year the candy cane gram fundraiser supports a different cause. This year, NAfME made the choice to donate toward leukemia cure research.
“I don’t think there’s anybody on the planet at this point who has not either been affected by cancer directly or has a loved one or relative who’s affected by cancer, so we’d like to do our part to help eradicate that,” said Hart.
Hart shared a personal connection to the event’s donations, saying that his conducting mentor had a type of leukemia that required a bone marrow transplant and that he was able to find a bone marrow donor through one of the types of organizations that the fundraiser is supporting.
Sophomore Cailyn Gorman, who bought a candy cane gram, also described the event’s cause as something “special” to her.
“It hits home for me,” Gorman said. “My family has a history of cancer and I thought it was really important to donate towards it.”
The candy cane grams will mainly begin to be distributed throughout the school during finals week.
Justin Dearborn can be contacted at
