Last Friday, Norristown Area High School’s National Honor Society held its third-ever MiniTHON, an event meant to raise money through donations and other events all heading towards an important cause.

Created by Penn State University in 1973, THON began as a Dance Marathon to raise money in support of a worthwhile cause. Four years later, “Four Diamonds”, a childhood cancer research program, became the primary beneficiary of THON. All the money that was raised for THON would go directly towards funding for Four Diamonds and its own cancer research. 

In order to spread more awareness, bring more communities together, and to raise more money, Four Diamonds partnered with other Pennsylvania institutions, primarily high schools, such as Norristown and Methacton. Thus, the idea of a “Mini” THON was born, a similar but smaller-scale version of THON, in which a night of celebration would occur, featuring dancing, food, and other school entertainment. 

For Norristown specifically, many different performances were featured to the crowd of participants, including the likes of the school’s Jazz Band, Drumline, Color Guard and Sabor Latino dance crew. Other entertainment options were available early in the night as well, including games for children, music played by DJs Evan Bartlett and Brandon Purdy, and even food donated from Chick-fil-a. 

This would have been the school’s fourth annual MiniTHON if not for some electrical difficulties last year that presented itself the day of the event. The event was postponed and later cancelled altogether as other events in the school and the timing of the cancellation just made the event impossible to happen. Because of this cancellation, this past MiniTHON was truly a special one, a redemption from the previous year’s cancellation. 

The National Honor Society set this year’s goal at raising  $15,000 before the actual event. In the past, with the two MiniTHONs, NHS never did reach this goal, but this past friday, the organization exceeded all expectations and shattered the goal by almost $3,000, raising a total of $17,753.63. 

“We raised enough money to reach our goal, even more than we had planned too,” Honor Society Treasurer, Camila Villanueva-Salguero said. “It was so satisfying seeing how much we actually raised and how it grew.”

 “It was great to hold those numbers up at the end of the night,” Honor Society Advisor Steven Dinenno said. “Last year, we actually raised around $10,000 even without an event. So that was pretty special for the students even though they were disappointed we couldn’t have the event.”

The majority of that large sum of money that was raised at the end of the night came directly from the students in the National Honor Society. Four Diamonds has a “Donor Drive” that each Honor Society member has to set up, these drives are host to any and all donations given towards each student, all proceeds going to the organization, of course. Certain goal incentives were provided to encourage students to make as much money as possible.

  “We put so much into this and we continuously worked to make this the best it can be every single year and we can’t wait to raise our goal even more next year to $20,000,” Honor Society MiniTHON chair Sara Chaaraoui said. 

Despite not having the expected turnout at the event, most likely in part due to the previous event’s cancellation, many members still feel like the community’s support was still felt tremendously. 

“Our main goal for today was to bring the community all together for the one cause of raising money for kids’ cancer,” Honor Society Secretary Safi Jalloh said. “And I think the community did show up and they showed out.”

Honor Society President Alex Armas described it as a “heart-warming experience” seeing everyone come together in support of their cause. 

“I would’ve hoped for more people, but for the people that we had, we had a pretty good time,” Dinenno said. “We had a good turnout. Next year, hoping for a few more.” 

But Dinenno and the Honor Society still have plans for the rest of the following school year. 

“Four Diamonds encourages schools to fundraise past their Minithon, through the rest of the school year. So, we’ll be having some other events and asking for donations until probably the end of May,” he said.

As for the future and next year’s MiniTHON, the Honor Society is more prepared than ever. 

“We’re actually going to start planning next year [this] April,” Dinenno said. “Hopefully giving us more time will mean that more people can be involved and we can get things running even smoother. 

All in all, through the differing challenges from setting up the events to the planning to the raising of the money itself, this year’s MiniTHON was considered a success by the members of the National Honor Society. 

“At the end of the day, we got the job done and hopefully we can keep raising money,” Armas said. 

Hopefully, for all parties involved, this was just a sample of what’s in store for the future of MiniTHON and Four Diamonds.