Students raise more than $15,000 for St. Baldrick’s Foundation

Student volunteers participating in the 2018 St. Baldrick’s event. Photo by Ian Kanterman

KINGSTON, R.I.- March 26, 2018 — Did someone say shave the day? More than 100 University of Rhode Island students answered that call to action during the third annual St. Baldrick’s event Monday, which raised more than $15,000 for the St Baldrick’s Foundation for childhood cancer research.

The music echoing through the Memorial Union Ballroom helped soothe the angst some participants might have experienced when making the decision to shave their heads or donate their hair to raise money and awareness for research into childhood cancers.

Event organizer and co-coordinator Ian Kanterman is driven by his own connection to pediatric cancer. A survivor himself, Kanterman views his second chance as a way to give back as much as possible.

Ian Kanterman
Ian Kanterman shaving his head for pediatric cancer research and awareness with Rhody by his side.

“I hope that St. Baldrick’s sees many more years at URI,” said Kanterman, a Brick, N.J. native who coordinated URI’s first St. Baldrick’s event three years ago. “St. Baldrick’s is just one piece of my legacy that I hope will create ripples of passion in others. To genuinely empower others to find a worthy cause to support and give back to their community selflessly — that’s my hope.”

During the event, participants and attendees posed in a photo booth with props, wrote “get well” notes to pediatric cancer patients and entered a raffle that included such prizes as Khalid concert tickets and gift cards to local restaurants, including Mew’s Tavern and Iggy’s.

While the focus remained on the volunteers shaving their heads on the stage, there was also a table where attendees could donate to the Children’s Miracle Network, another nonprofit organization that is the beneficiary of URI’s first RhodyThon dance marathon.

URI sophomore nursing major Molly Beluk made the bold decision to donate 12 inches of hair and completely shave her head in solidarity with pediatric cancer patients, while raising more than $2,700. Beluk, who has donated her hair three times before, explains that the decision to completely shave her head was many years in the making.

“Since my junior year of high school, I had planned to raise as much money as possible for childhood cancer research and awareness and eventually shave my head,” said the Newburyport, Mass., resident. “The motivation behind shaving my head was for all the children who don’t have the choice to shave their heads and who have no clue what cancer is and why it’s affecting their body the way it is.”

Olivia Ross, an intern in the Marketing and Communications Department at URI and public relations major, wrote this press release.