With the 2025 PWAP event approaching, along with upcoming merch distribution and the success of the Valentine’s Day flower sale, the PWAP team from Belmont Hill, Winsor, Dana Hall, and Rivers has been actively working to rally community support for Boston Children’s Hospital. The team recently released a short, three-minute video on Instagram, detailing key aspects of the program: PWAP is a dance marathon program that fundraises for Boston Children’s Hospital, the community’s local children’s “miracle hospital.” Over the years of working with Boston Children’s, PWAP has raised over $240,000 in support for its patients through events, sales, and donations. This year, the PWAP main event will be hosted at Belmont Hill on March 1, from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM, where there will be numerous yard games, open skating, karaoke, raffles, and much more.
All the spur over the event often causes the work the team does behind the scenes to be overlooked. Properly arranging the PWAP puzzle has taken immense work from the team, and it should be acknowledged that each aspect of the fundraiser takes intricate planning, communication, and collaboration. The most challenging part, with so many schools being involved, is finding meeting times that work for all members and maintaining a constant flow of communication. Communication is easy within each school, but transmitting a message or executing a project across the four schools has a significantly larger margin of error. Despite this challenge, the schools have been able to maintain a distinct flow of contact, allowing the team to achieve this year’s programming goals required for PWAP to have another impactful year.
Through the Valentine’s Day flower sale and donor drive, supporters can now donate online. As Davis Woolbert ’25, a PWAP team member, describes, “The donor drive is a great platform for people to further support the PWAP fundraising effort.” The flower sale also tested the team’s ability as it required the unpacking and wrapping of thousands of roses, accounting for those lost or damaged on top of the original order. The Belmont Hill team, with the guidance of staff and parents, learned to wrap bouquets of roses, and two weeks ago, had a highly successful distribution process: all flowers gained or lost in transit were accounted for, and every single rose that entered campus left, sold to a member of the community.
The greatest undertaking for the team has been preparation for the main PWAP event. The team faced a long list of tasks including donations, food suppliers, and DJ sets in anticipation of March 1. Everything from the placing of registration tables to snack selection required meticulous planning and hours of deliberation. Delegating certain duties to each school required intense cooperation and open-mindedness, and the team hopes that the culmination of all their work and the community’s support will transpire into an exciting, successful, and meaningful event. In Henry Hagedorn’s ’25 words, “The PWAP event is a great way of bringing all schools involved in the program together, gathering hundreds of students, to celebrate the work that has been done to support Boston Children’s Hospital.”
The majority of the Belmont Hill community has still not signed up for March 1. The team highly encourages all students to attend, as the event is where the true meaning behind PWAP lies: a communal gathering celebrating Maggie Ryan and supporting the Boston Children’s patients. Sign-ups will remain open through March 1, so you still can register! Emails from Henry Hagedorn ’25 and Nick Pellagrini ’25 have the link to the form—check it out!
