About 5 decades ago, students at Waterloo Lutheran University (now known as Wilfrid Laurier University) started a fundraiser by simply going out during orientation week to shine shoes. Today, more than 60 universities and colleges across Canada participate in Shinerama with the goal of raising more awareness and money to fight cystic fibrosis.
What happens on Shine Day 2013?
On Saturday, September 7, over 35,000 volunteers across Canada go out into their respective towns/cities to raise awareness and money for research in cystic fibrosis. From giving out hugs to shining shoes, from break-dancing to doing the dougie, students creatively raise awareness and funds for Shinerama.
What is Cystic Fibrosis?
Imagine living your life breathing through a straw everyday. Imagine living your life with a high calorie diet and regimen of pancreatic enzymes and vitamin supplements to ensure adequate nutrition. CF is the most common fatal genetic disease affecting youth mainly targeting the lungs and digestive systems of the body.
Approximately one in 25 Canadians is a CF carrier, carrying only one defective version of the gene responsible for cystic fibrosis. Carriers do not have, and can never get, cystic fibrosis. In most cases, they are not even aware they are carriers until they have a child with CF.
When the Shinerama campaign first began, most CF patients would not be able to live past the age of 6. Today a CF patient on average lives to the age of 48 and a half years old. Shinerama has been one of the main contributors to raising awareness and funds for fighting a CF.
Come out and #Shine! Let’s make CF stand for CURE FOUND! #UBCSHINE13
Last year at the University of British Columbia, over 300 students came out on Shine Day to raise more than $10,000 in one day. UBC also won the ‘Best Overall Campaign’ Award in Canada.
This year, UBC’s target is to reach 800 volunteers! They need your help to reach this target. You can sign up as an individual and meet new people in your Shine group or you have the option of signing up yourself and your friends as a Shine group.
Date: Saturday September, 7th 2013
Start time: Please come to the Student Union Building Ballroom by 9am
Volunteers will be given a #Shine package upon registration at the entrance.
Vancity Buzz is proud to be a sponsor of the 2013 Shinerama UBC Campaign.
