Notre Dame community members have the opportunity to make a Michiana-area child’s wish come true by attending Make a Wish Notre Dame’s first annual Variety Show on Friday at 7 p.m. in the Carey Auditorium. All proceeds from the event’s $10 admission charge will go to fulfilling the patient’s wish.
Editor’s note: Sophomore Megan Crowley, one of the organizers of the event, spoke to The Observer with the assistance of her nurse, KC Buder, who is quoted below.
“The event is specifically to raise money for Make a Wish, so every dollar they raise goes directly to Make a Wish, not to the club,” Buder said. “All of the money that they’re raising at this event and all the events they’ve had … will go to a wish for a kid.”
The inspiration for the Variety Show came from a desire to engage students across Notre Dame’s campus, Buder said.
“They originally wanted to do a gala, but it was a lot of work,” Buder said. “A variety show could include more students. They wanted to make the club a lot more well-known on campus, so by including a lot of acts from different students around campus, that could help them spread the word about Make a Wish.”
Make a Wish is a national organization with the goal of “[granting] the wishes of children with life-threatening medical conditions to enrich the human experiment with hope, strength and joy,” according to the nonprofit’s website. The Make a Wish Notre Dame club seeks to do so on a smaller scale by raising money to help fulfill these wishes.
The show will feature about 12 acts, including Irish Dance, Harmonia, the Notre Dame Student Standups, Humor Artists, junior musician Kieran Kelly, the Notre Dame Dance Company and an original Keenan Revue skit by residents of Keenan Hall. Crowley said she is most excited to see the Keenan Revue act. Since the sketch is being written exclusively for the Variety Show, even the organizers will not see it before the event, she said.
This year is Make a Wish Notre Dame’s first year as a full club on campus after being a probationary club as a newly proposed organization last year. This variety show being one of the club’s first official events makes the event especially exciting for the club members, Buder said.
“This will be their first real, big event,” she said. “It’s going to be really fun, entertaining and exciting to see it come to life because they’ve been working on it all semester.”
The club’s goal for this year is to raise money for one Wish kid, Buder said. Since the club must wait for the Make a Wish chapter of Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky to let them know which wishes are available for fulfillment, the club members did not know the specifics of the Wish they were fulfilling until the middle of the year, and will not have any specific information about their next Wish kid until well after Friday’s event.
“They try to aim for a Wish kid to be from the area, whether it be Notre Dame, Mishawka [or] South Bend,” she said. “They try to make it more local.”
Make a Wish Notre Dame hosted a Superhero 5k run last semester, as well as a concession stand during a football weekend to raise money for wishes. Crowley said the club is also organizing a fundraiser to host at Commencement.
