Love Your Melon at Liberty Brings Hope to Pediatric Cancer Patients

In an effort to bring attention to a national organization that raises money and awareness for pediatric cancer, one student petitioned to form a club, formally referred to as a Campus Crew, to bring the Love Your Melon organization onto the Liberty University campus.

According to the organization’s mission statement, “Love Your Melon is an apparel brand dedicated to giving a hat to every child battling cancer in America as well as supporting nonprofit organizations who lead the fight against pediatric cancer.”

Essentially, the organization raises money by selling stylish beanies and transfer 50 percent of their proceeds directly to nonprofit organizations, including St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, the Ronald McDonald House Charities, the Make-A-Wish foundation and the Pinky Swear Foundation.

Since its formation, Love Your Melon has donated over $3.8 million to these organizations, and given more than 123,000 beanies to children battling cancer.

Senior Carley Warner resides as the current president over Liberty’s Love Your Melon Campus Crew, and senior Paige Davies is vice president.

“I applied to start the club at Liberty about two years ago, but a few people had actually already started the application process for a LYM club,” Warner said. “At the time, I was the vice president, and then when the founder graduated, I took over as the president.”

Since then, the club has grown to its maximum capacity of 30 members, with a current waitlist of 18 students. It is not up to Warner though — Love Your Melon caps the number of members in the Campus Crew.

“When we go on hospital visits, we can’t take 100 people,” Warner said. “Love Your Melon limits us to 30 people in the club.”

The Campus Crew program provides Love Your Melon with a wide range of like-minded college students all over the country to represent their brand and assist the organization with a variety of promotions and campaigns.

“Love Your Melon at the corporate level encourages us to push sales, but more importantly social media,” Warner said. “They want people to see what we’re doing with the kids in our local area.”

The club also competes in different contests with other Campus Crews in their region to get a chance to visit a child in the hospital.

Each club in the region falls onto a leaderboard based on credits, and clubs can earn credits through various things, including celebrity endorsements, bone marrow drives, and social media followers. As of now, Liberty’s club is ranked No. 2 in the southern region out of 120 crews.

“The more points we get, the more often Love Your Melon makes connections for us with hospitals and kids in the area,” Warner said. “So far, they’ve given us the names of three kids, and we’ve been able to take some of them out and do fun things for them. Once Love Your Melon gives us their name and their contact info, and we’ll usually reach out to their mom. She’ll tell us what they like and we’ll plan a day for them full of their favorite things.”

In addition, depending on where a crew ranks, Love Your Melon will occasionally give them a small sum of money to take a child on an adventure for a day.

“One time they gave us $250 to spend on a day for this girl Emily,” Davies said. “We went to a museum, had her favorite princess come, and went to Build-A-Bear.”

If Love Your Melon doesn’t provide the money for them, then it is up to the crew to organize a fun adventure within their means.

“Usually people are pretty generous when they hear we’re trying to help a kid with cancer,” Davies said. “One time we asked a bakery for a discount, and they gave us everything for free.”

In the meantime, when the crew members are not out planning a fun-filled day for a child, they are setting up booths on campus to push sales, do monthly Love Your Melon challenges or just talk to students about the organization.

“This year we’re really pushing for more social media followers,” Warner said. “We post three times a week about different sales, and we update our followers with what we’re doing with the kids outside of Liberty, so people can see what we’re really about. We started this semester with less than 1,000 followers, and now we’re at over 2,500.”

Sometimes they find that students only want to follow them if they are getting something in return. However, every time they gain a social media follower, it gives them a point toward their progress over other Campus Crews.

“So really, every follower goes toward helping us bring happiness to a kid with cancer,” Davies said.

As far as what inspired them to join and lead the club on campus, both Warner and Davies get their passion for this organization from different aspects of their lives.

“I’m a nursing major, and I want to work someday with kids with cancer,” Warner said. “That’s my dream. I volunteer at hospitals back home, so I see what the kids go through in a hospital setting. It’s sad to see what their everyday lives in the hospital look like, getting treatments, but it’s cool that we can take them out of that setting and bring them joy for a day.”

Davies, on the other hand, can relate to the families that the crew interacts with in a very real way, because she has gone through the same experience.

“My mom passed away from cancer, so I know how cancer can affect a family,” Davies said. “Even if we go on a visit and I just get to talk to a mom or a sister of a child with cancer, I can understand how they’re feeling. Brightening their day can make a difference in the day of that child with cancer.”

Even if it is just visiting a child in the hospital for an afternoon, she said she sees value in it.

“Getting to go out there and do something for someone else, because so many people did things for me and my family, feels really great,” Davies said. “I get to pay it forward.”

The visits and special days that the crew members did in the past really have made an impact on those children and their relatives.

“A lot of the moms still keep in touch with us,” Davies said. “We make real bonds and relationships with these families.”

Looking forward, they will continue to work toward bringing joy to these children and awareness to this organization that contributes to the causes that will hopefully someday cure pediatric cancer.