Twenty DePauw students are bringing cancer awareness to the University by working with a clothing brand called Love Your Melon.
The club, led by Sophomore Brittany Welker, started its efforts with DePauw in November 2016 and has been recruiting new members ever since in order to support pediatric cancer research.
Love Your Melon was started by two classmates at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota in 2012. The organization sells apparel, accessories, and hats to raise money for the company’s nonprofit partners who focus on pediatric cancer. One of the ways the brand brings in donations and expands its audience is through its Campus Crew Program. The program is currently in place at over 700 colleges, including DePauw.
Welker started the Campus Crew Program at DePauw by reaching out to Love Your Melon and submitting an application for DePauw. While there had been talk about starting a crew on campus last year, students had a hard time putting one together. However, this year, DePauw was granted admission to the highly selective program and the organization has proven to be successful on campus.
At DePauw, the purpose of the organization is to “publicize the brand in order to bring awareness to it on campus,” first-year Abby Hess said, “and with college students the main goal is just to get more business for this company.” The students promote Love Your Melon products and encourage other students to purchase from the website. To increase funds and donations, the members of the organization go around campus wearing their Love Your Melon beanies or baseball caps, which encourages students to purchase apparel from the website.
“Some sort of tabling definitely is what we’re really looking into for this next semester, kind of get the name out there and promote it a little bit more,” explained the Public Relations Manager for the club, Junior Lauren Witherspoon.
One of the unique qualities of Love Your Melon is that it is “one of the organizations that gives most of the profits towards pediatric cancer research, whereas with other companies it’s 10%” said Kira Singer. Beyond donating half of their proceeds to childhood cancer, the program also has another factor that makes it stand out, their campus credit program.
Each Campus Crew works to earn credit for their school club by encouraging the sale of the products online. According to Hess, “ [students] can go online and when they checkout there’s an option to choose a school; then, if they select DePauw, we get credit for it.”
For every item purchased, the crew receives one credit, which puts them in the ranking against other universities across the United States. The credits also show how well DePauw’s Love Your Melon crew is doing with outreach. Singer explained that for this year, the club’s goal is to reach enough credits to where they will be able to go to a hospital and deliver beanies to children with cancer.
Students who are not involved with the organization, such as first-year Sarah Ramsey, are still able to see the positive impact that Love Your Melon is having around campus. “I think it’s a really awesome program that any school across the country can get involved in,” Ramsey said. “DePauw has great representatives that are very passionate for the cause, which I think really helps with the success.”
Those interested in supporting DePauw’s branch of Love Your Melon can visit the organization’s website and select DePauw at checkout in order to help achieve this year’s goal of visiting a hospital.