By: Mihaela Manova
A
In recent weeks, three Loveland High School students (Sam Greenberg, Jordan Sovik, and Ben Westley) were nominated for the Student of the Year program to raise funds for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. They had seven weeks to accomplish their goal through the help of the Loveland community, while going against other Greater Cincinnati teams.
Their team, CUREage, was involved in getting the whole community to become a part of the cause, not just be a silent supporter. By volunteering and working together with businesses while making connections to spread the cause, their performance was fueled by passion, not superficial intention.
In collaboration with Bishop’s Quarter, Chipotle, t-shirt sales, and meetings with Art Jarvis, team CUREage was on the right path of achieving their goal one step at a time.
The amount that each team raised was revealed after a silent auction on the fundraising finale. Their collaboration within their team and contributions have brought in precisely $58,571. Adding their profits to the other 18 student teams from the Greater Cincinnati area, the combined total amounted to $361,744.21.
An achievement that left many stunned, Loveland Magazine talked to Jordan and Sam about their efforts.
Q: What is your reaction to the $58,000 that you guys have made?
Jordan: “Half way through the campaign I thought that we were definitely not going to hit the (goal), just because we were a month in. We only had $22,000, which was still a lot, but I was not expecting to reach $50,000. Once we got towards the last couple weeks of (fundraising), our community really started to pitch in and all of our main events that we had scheduled went really well. So our numbers started really going up and we ended up hitting $50,000, going way over our goal.
It was just one of those things that were, in that moment, so surreal. All the people that were there supporting us were around us and seeing everyone’s reaction to the success was definitely what made everything we have done in the past six months so worth it.”
Q: How was working with Jordan and Ben for the organization?
Sam: “Working with Jordan and Ben was great. At times, it felt like we had a lot on our plate, but it was nice to be able to rely on each other when we needed it. Overall, the whole experience was very rewarding because all of our hard work went towards a worthy cause.”
The Leukemia Lymphoma Society is the largest non-profit organization that is “dedicated to creating a world without blood cancers” as said by their official website. They have invested around $1.3 billion in research while using the most innovative approaches to combat cancer. This society has also helped advance research grants, blood cancer therapies, and co-pay financial assistance. To donate go to https://donate.lls.org/lls/donate.
