Leading up to NOVAdance’s annual “Day-Of,” which is a 12-hour dance marathon dedicated to raising money for pediatric cancer and the Andrew McDonough B+ Foundation, Villanova students, faculty and community members are asked a simple question: “What is Your Why?”
Some may perceive that question as “why do you partake in NOVAdance?” while others are answering “who do you dance for?”
The question is left up to interpretation for a reason — because there is no wrong answer.
Joe McDonough, Andrew’s father and the founder of the B+ Foundation, reflected on this question, and the “Day-Of,” in a broader sense.
By looking at love.
“Everything about this is sharing love,” McDonough said. “We have a choice to hold on to our love or share our love and every person in [Jake Nevin] has chosen to be here and share our love with a vulnerable population.”
The B+ Foundation, which is the largest provider of financial assistance to families of kids with cancer in the United States, has 80+ school partners across the country. This includes on-campus organizations, clubs, sports teams, residence halls, fraternities and sororities.
These partnerships were an idea that McDonough had after his son, Andrew, lost his battle with AML Leukemia, just 167 days after first being diagnosed.
“I had this idea,” McDonough said. “I was going to pair kids with cancer with fraternities and sororities.”
The very first child that McDonough ever paired was a little boy with Sigma Phi Epsilon at the University of Delaware. After he successfully paired them, he turned to the boy and asked if he had any questions for his new brothers.
“Just one,” the boy said. “When do I get to play beer pong?”
While the first ever B+ hero didn’t get to play beer pong, his relationship with Delaware and its fraternities started a slogan much bigger than McDonough could have ever anticipated.
“Kids Helping Kids Fight Cancer.”
Since the founding of the B+ Foundation in 2007, this slogan has helped raise millions of dollars by college students and college campuses throughout the nation.
“Kids these days give me encouragement that we have a bright future,” McDonough said. “They [work] all year for kids with cancer who are not related to them.”
But what surprised McDonough the most wasn’t the impact that the pairing had on the B+ heroes. It was the impact that it had on the college students.
“I was fairly certain that it was going to be a positive thing for the children to be put up on a pedestal,” McDonough said. “Allow them to forget chemo and hospital visits for a while and have some big friends. You know, college students are rock stars to a little kid. But I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t do it for the college students. I absolutely did it for the children with cancer. And then when I saw how happy the kids were and how much the college students were getting out of it, it was just this eureka moment. I’m like, damn, this is great. Everybody’s winning.”
And that eureka moment is one that college students share in on during the “Day-Of.” This year, NOVAdance raised $708, 269.10. Nearly $125,000 of that money was raised during the 12-hour dance marathon alone.
“This is the cherry on top,” McDonough said. “The ‘Day-Of’ is the cherry on top. This is the celebration of a year’s worth of work, and when you put those kids, those B+ positive heroes on stage, it’s just a very tangible reminder why we do what we do.”
Yet while each college campus and each dance marathon is fighting and working towards the same goal, McDonough is observant to point out that each campus goes about it in a different way.
“The students that make up the schools have a personality,” McDonough said. “And the personality of Villanova students, and I think there’s a large self-selection, because it’s a faith based institution, is that it has a very strong service component, and that’s reflected in NOVAdance.”
And for McDonough, that Villanova, service-driven personality is what makes NOVAdance all the more special.
“You just see so many kids rallying around our children with cancer,” McDonough said. “The [Villanova] students, they just give up so much of their time. And to me… I would look at this as just as important as an educational class that the student takes. This is a co-curricular activity that prepares Villanova students for life. This is the real world.”
And the truth of the matter is that pediatric cancer, and the 46 children who are diagnosed with it every single school day, is in fact the real world.
But that’s exactly why McDonough, NOVAdance and the 80-plus schools nationwide continue to fight each day.
“When I saw all those kids on the stage [of Jake Nevin], I had very mixed emotions,” McDonough said. “On the one hand, my heart was warm seeing these kids being on the stage, but on the other hand, did you see how many kids were on that stage? I pray for a world where there’s three kids on stage, two kids on stage and eventually maybe no kids on stage. That’s the fight. That’s the goal.”
