Marywood’s Love Your Melon chapter plans to help those affected by pediatric cancer one beanie at a time.

Love Your Melon is an apparel brand with a mission to provide warm hats for pediatric cancer patients while donating 50 percent of their net proceeds from product sales to nonprofit organizations leading the fight against pediatric cancer.

What does Love Your Melon do?
According to its website, the brand donated over 75,000 hats, as well as over $1.1 million to pediatric cancer research and immediate support for those affected by it since 2012. After the launch of their Campus Crew program in 2014, more than 11,000 members at 740 colleges and universities joined their ranks.

This semester, Emily Hulse, a junior nutrition and dietetics major, initiated a new Love Your Melon Campus Crew at Marywood.

“As a transfer student, I definitely wanted to kind of make my mark early on and find a way to get involved in not only the Marywood community, but in the greater Scranton community,” said Hulse, the crew’s captain.

“Especially as a nutrition major, it’s one of my passions to help others in any way.”

Hulse said she felt the group would be a success because helping others is an important value at Marywood. Since the beginning of the semester, the group officially reached 20 members.

Campus Crews are responsible for spreading awareness of pediatric cancer, as well as promoting the Love Your Melon brand through promotions and sales. While the company gives them certain goals to meet, the group plans to do outside projects and go beyond just helping raise money through selling apparel.

“The product is the name of the group, but that’s a small bit of what we’re trying to accomplish,” said Taylor Guttesman, a junior art therapy major and group member.

The Love Your Melon chapter teamed up with Colleges Against Cancer and donated a gift basket to a children’s hospital in Danville, Pennsylvania. The basket included items such as art supplies, bubbles and coloring books.

For their next project, they plan on sending greeting cards to pediatric cancer patients in another children’s hospital this holiday season.

As for future goals, the chapter hopes to establish a relationship with a local hospital and become their immediate source of projects, gifts or any kind of help. Directly reaching out to local families affected by pediatric cancer is in their plans as well.

More than just a club
For members personally affected by cancer, Love Your Melon’s mission hits closer to home.

“I recently went through cancer treatment myself,” Guttesman said. “I feel really fortunate to be a part of it [Love Your Melon] and I just want to help in any way that my experience can help others and bring awareness to what’s really going on.”

Other members like Junior History major and Vice Captain Anna Notchick became inspired to get involved with pediatric cancer awareness after losing a loved one.

“I actually had one of my really good friends pass away my senior year of high school after a three-year battle with Hodgkin’s lymphoma,” she said.

“She always said that cancer wasn’t who she was, it was just something she had. She taught me so much about how to live my life. It’s nice knowing that you have a say and that you can make a difference, even if it’s just one beanie at a time.”

According to Hulse, the group is looking to collaborate with other campus groups and organizations more often. They also want to encourage as many people as possible to attend their meetings and help out with projects, even non-members. Meetings are held bi-monthly in Room 9 of the Swartz Center, and upcoming dates can be found on the group’s Facebook page.

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