A company that started as a class project for two college students has expanded into a community service effort for more than 12-thousand students at nearly 800 college campuses across the country. Zachary Quinn and Brian Keller were students at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, when they launched “Love Your Melon.” The idea was to provide beanies and baseball caps for local children with cancer, but it was so successful they started a company, with half of the profits going to pediatric cancer research. Spokesman Alex Meysman says college students go to hospitals dressed up in Superhero costumes to deliver the caps to the kids.
In the last four years, Love Your Melon has provided more than 86-thousand hats to children with cancer and raised more than 1-point-5 million dollars for cancer research. There are several campus chapters of Love Your Melon in Indiana, including at Purdue and Indiana universities.
Meysman says college students have embraced the idea of helping the children.
Meysman says it’s mostly about the kids, but it’s also teaching the millennials who volunteer their time something very valuable.
Meysman says Love Your Melon has been so successful that most of their products online have sold out since Cyber Monday.