According to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, 70,000 people worldwide suffer from cystic fibrosis and Simpson College’s service fraternity, Alpha Phi Omega, and Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity are doing their part to help find a cure.

Members of these two organizations set up a teeter-totter in numerous places across campus and across the community in order to collect change for finding a cure for cystic fibrosis.

The organizations raised around $300 during their one-day fundraiser.

“I really liked how well we tried to do all we can and how well our philanthropy coordinator, Nels Dovre, put together everything, like all the locations we were: Circle of Knowledge, outside Pfeiffer, Wal-Mart parking lot, and Gray’s Lake,” freshman Alec Medeiros said. “We were really able to get our message heard that way.”

Cystic fibrosis is defined as being, “an inherited chronic disease that affects the lungs and digestive system. A defective gene and its protein product cause the body to produce unusually thick, sticky mucus that clogs the lungs and leads to life-threatening lung infections; and obstructs the pancreas and stops natural enzymes from helping the body break down and absorb food.”

Because of this disease, many children are not able to attend schools or lead a regular life without treatment-and APO and LXA hold a fund raiser each year to raise money for a cure.

Senior Sara Stoddard agrees that the message was well received this year. While there was some misunderstanding when the teeter-totter was moved to the Wal-Mart parking lot, the conflict was resolved by moving the teeter-totter, and in the end, participants said the fundraiser was successful.

“I was working on the teeter-totter outside of the green light hip-hop dance,” Stoddard said. “Sure, a lot of people ignored us and just kept walking, but at the same time, it seemed like a lot of people would turn around and go back to their rooms to get change and come back and donate money.”

Medeiros agreed with Stoddard that the students and faculty on the Simpson campus were open-minded and generous with donations.

“We were out there on a teeter-totter trying to raise money for a good cause and people were pretty nice about it too,” Medeiros said. “We did have a couple of stingy people, but I suppose that is to be expected of course.”

This fund raiser was noticed, not only by the people in the Greek community, but by students across the entire campus.

‘I thought it was very interesting to see them on campus and then I saw them again at Wal-Mart,” freshman Emily Monaghan said. “It really showed me that they involved the community, and I was really impressed by the Greek life community this week. I’m not in the Greek community, so seeing them really active on the campus when it wasn’t Greek week and then seeing them go out in to the community and involve them really impressed me and gave me a good impression of Greek life.”