The Harbour, a Park Ridge-based program that works to help homeless youth escape the confines of poverty, is this year’s Dance Marathon’s primary beneficiary for the 2022-2023 school year.

Dance Marathon is a student-run organization at Niles North that works to raise money for a selected charity in need each school year. This year’s charity was selected to be the Harbour, a non-for-profit organization that focuses on helping homeless youth and young mothers with children that are in need of a safe and stable environment. The services the Harbour provides include giving out nutritious meals, providing education and employment opportunities, and giving individual counseling to youth in order to help break the cycle of homelessness.

“This year, we’re hoping to increase awareness and issues of homelessness that impact youth in our community,” Dance Marathon sponsor Mr. Sharma said. “We also want to start engaging younger students, like freshmen and sophomores, to participate.”

Dance Marathon also works to host several entertaining fundraising events throughout the year as a way to help raise money for their annual beneficiary.

“Some events that have already happened this year that have raised money for the Harbour have been our booth at the Backlot Bash that raised over $800, and the Freshman/Sophomore Mixer that was held in the school’s courtyards,” Dance Marathon executive Batool Salman said. “Some upcoming events that we have to fundraise include the V-Show, and the 5K Run which will hopefully not only work to raise money for the Harbour, but also involvement from our school and community.”

Last year, Dance Marathon helped raise over $45,000 for Girl Forward and the D219 Foundation, marking 20 years of serving the Niles North community and the total fundraising of over $1.2 million dollars for a variety of non-profit organizations over the years.

“I believe that one thing that Dance Marathon can do better this year to raise more money than years past would be to raise more awareness about our various fundraisers throughout the year to get more interaction,” Salman said. “With so many emails that roll in every day and so many other clubs that have the same goals of getting their events attended, it can prove difficult to get students to attend every fundraising event. One way that we can do this is by sending out our information about events sooner rather than later, so people can have a chance to plan for these in advance.”

If you would like to learn more information about The Harbour and its mission work, you can visit its website here. Dance Marathon meets immediately after Who Club at 4:30 in the Courtyard or The Point when the weather does not permit meeting outside. Feel free to stop by to learn more about how you can help!