JOY International presents Battle of the Bands on Nov. 15 to raise awareness of human trafficking.
There will be four bands battling it out for a cash prize. All proceeds from the donation-only event will go toward JOY International.
“College kids love free entertainment, and it’s located on campus so no one has to travel very far to come check it out,” Alyssa Bonner, junior Advertising and Public Relations major, said. “We will be selling concessions and T-shirts and we are going to have a silent auction, so there is a lot of potential to raise money for Joy International in other ways besides an admission fee.”
JOY International builds children’s homes around the world to provide children who are victims of human trafficking a place for rehabilitation. The event planning class of the Mass Communication Department is responsible for organizing the event.
“The president of the organization is a close friend of someone in the class,” Kellie Chandler, senior Corporate Communication major, said. “When our classmate expressed the financial needs of this organization, everyone immediately agreed that we had to do something for them. It was a unanimous decision to help them out as best as possible.”
The event planning class has been responsible for three different major events over the course of the semester.
“My expectation is that they will learn from the mistakes from one event to the next and will have successful events,” Connie McKee, instructor in the Department of Communication, said. “The students in the class had the assignment that we needed a big event. They took this assignment and came up with a fantastic event.”
The class was able to pick what kind of event they wanted to host. They considered events like a zombie run, a dodgeball tournament or donating food bags.
“The idea of having a battle of the bands was completely different from any other fundraiser that I had ever been to,” Chandler said. “There will always be a marathon to run or some kind of tournament that people can sign up for, but bands battling each other is different and far more entertaining than any of the other ideas we came up with. We really believe that this will bring in more donations and more awareness to the human trafficking industry.”
The class has used multiple outlets for marketing the event such as posters displayed in local businesses, Facebook postings and a spot on the calendar of events on the WTAMU website. Students also plan to pass out flyers the week of the event.
“These methods were chosen because they were the fastest, largest form of communication we had to get our event out there,” Chandler said, “especially when we got it on the marquee on 23rd Street. I think that’s when it hit several of the students that we were actually doing something big, something marquee worthy.”
