On May 19 the 16th annual Dance Marathon dance took place at Niles North High School, raising $80,823 for this year’s charity, A Better Life for Kids. District 219 has now donated over $1 million to charities worldwide. Attendees paid $8 per hour, to dance from 4 p.m. until midnight with each hour featuring a new theme.

Dance Marathon is a yearlong organization run by the students of district 219 that reaches out to a charity each year and helps raise money. District 219 decided to help out A Better Life for Kids, which is a non-profit organization that helps orphans, foster kids, and needy children in Ghana.

Sophomore Anna Urosev, who joined Dance Marathon this year, was excited about the large donation and the dance overall.

“It was so fun to just dance with my friends and know it’s for a good cause,” Urosev said. “I even got some of my friends willing to join next year which is so exciting because the organization is just expanding even more.”

Freshman Karly Svachula joined the organization her first year at West and didn’t regret it one bit. Svachula believes the entire cause of raising money and supporting charities is incredibly rewarding at the end of the year.

“I decided to be a part of Dance Marathon since I was a part of Orchesis, the dance company at Niles West,” Svachula said. “We got the opportunity to join forces with Niles North to perform in front of the dancers at Dance Marathon. Each of us chose a section from a dance that we had learned this year and taught each company the routine.”

A non-Orchesis member who joined Dance Marathon only last year is senior Haby Joseph. For his first year in the club, he was assigned Morale captain and moved up to executive his second and final year.

“I joined Dance Marathon last year and I was a Morale captain. MY job was basically to to tell people to register for events such as the ping pong tournament, and the variety show. This year was my first year as an executive and it was incredibly fun. I got to be more in action. [West] sponsors [Lauren] Flahive and [Karissa] Moy came up with creative ways to help fundraise money. We helped run the pie sale on pie day, the ping pong state championship, and many other things,” Joseph said.

The night overwhelmed attendees as a year worth of raising money finally paid off.

“The event was so fun because it was filled with so much energy from everyone that attended. Student were able to change their outfits throughout the night based on the theme for each hour. There was also a photo booth to capture the memories made at the dance,” Svachula said. “I think incoming freshmen should join next school year because the whole cause is to raise and support a charity. The ending feels so rewarding seeing how much money was raised.”