Olivia Love
Staff Writer
Granting a critically ill child’s wish could be as easy as eating a bowl of homemade spaghetti. The College of Pharmacy at ISU has created a “pay-it-forward” environment with its annual Spaghetti Feed, Auction and Raffle which is in its 23rd year of fundraising money for the College of Pharmacy.
The funds that are raised go straight back to the community by sponsoring a Make-a-Wish child or sustaining the college’s outreach pharmaceutical programs.
The event is almost completely student run with a few faculty advisers to supply input about ideas. Each year the students set out to sponsor a child from the Make-a-Wish Foundation. “This year we are sponsoring Meg. She’s a nine year old with leukemia,” said Staci Branaum, current chair of the event. “Her wish is to go to Disney World with her family over spring break.”
The revenue raised by the event has come a long way since its early days. The amount of money the event raises has increased by about 400 percent.
“At the beginning we raised five to six thousand dollars and now the event raises around 22,000,” said Kevin Cleveland, former faculty adviser for the Spaghetti Feed.
The donors at the event are not just pharmacy related. The community has united and big names, such as Simplot, have become faithful donors to the cause.
When asked if there was a target goal for the amount of money fundraised, Cleveland responded, “We always want to beat last year.”
Since there has been such an increase in the profit of the Spaghetti Feed, more money has been able to go to the sponsored children. “We like to give as much as we can to Make-a-Wish,” Cleveland said. “The flier says we give around 25 percent to the child but we usually find that we’re close enough to fully funding the child so we go ahead and do that.”
After the donation is made, the remaining funds go towards the College of Pharmacy’s various outreach programs.
“One of our big ones is Operation Immunization,” said Branaum. “We go and educate the community about vaccines and give vaccines throughout the community.”
In addition to this, pharmacy students attend health fairs to talk about heart health as well as go to classrooms to provide education about meth and over-the-counter drug use.
Although the event is organized by students, the faculty members are eager to help in any way that they can. Many of them are behind the scenes cooking the spaghetti and making the department’s very own recipe for spaghetti sauce.
The Spaghetti Feed typically attracts 400 to 600 people per year and that number is expected to grow. Among those in attendance are past recipients the college has sponsored as well as their families. This goes to show the positive environment the event has created not only for ISU but for the Pocatello community as a whole.
This year, the Spaghetti Feed is on Friday, March 4 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at Pond Student Union Building Ballroom. Attendance is $5 per person and $20 per family of any size.
More information can be found at: https://sites.google.com/a/pharmacy.isu.edu/sfra/home.
