October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and the Residence Halls Association is hosting Paint It Pink Week, a week-long series of fundraising events to benefit the Ellis Fischel Cancer Center.

Monday’s kickoff marked the seventh year RHA has hosted Paint It Pink Week. This year there will be new events, and the proceeds will be donated to the Ellis Fischel Cancer Center. Previously, funds raised by the event were donated to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

“We made the decision to donate this year’s proceeds to the Fischel Center because we want to keep the money local, and the Fischel Center is based at MU and focused on preventing cancer in Missouri,” RHA Programming Coordinator Kenton Gewecke said.

Specifically, the funds raised by this year’s events will help support the Fischel’s Center mammography van, which provides mammograms and preventative breast cancer screenings to women living in communities throughout Missouri, particularly in rural areas. The donations received by RHA will go toward financing free mammograms for low-income women.

RHA will be collecting donations and giving away T-shirts at Speakers Circle from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. each day during Paint It Pink Week. MU students are encouraged to donate at least $10 in exchange for a shirt, but they are not required to do so to receive one.

This year, RHA will also be giving away food items such as cotton candy and baked goods from the Paint It Pink Week table at Speakers Circle in order to further encourage donations. All proceeds will go to the Ellis Fischel Cancer Center.

“We decided that having these food items would get the attention of people walking by so that they would hopefully want to donate,” Gewecke said. “We also wanted to give people more opportunities to donate and get involved beyond just buying T-shirts.”

To end the week, RHA is hosting Pink Pancakes, a new event that will take place before the MU volleyball team takes on Mississippi State on Sunday at the west entrance of the Hearnes Center. Students who attend this event will be able to eat pancakes and get painted pink before the game.

RHA is also partnering with Shakespeare’s Pizza and Red Mango to host fundraising events at their establishments Wednesday and Thursday, respectively. Shakespeare’s will donate 15 percent of all sales made to customers who print off and present a Paint It Pink Week fundraiser brochure, which is available on the RHA Facebook page and website.

Students who wear their Paint It Pink T-shirts to Saturday’s screening of “Ted” at Wrench Auditorium will receive free admission.

RHA is hoping to raise at least $8,000 during Paint It Pink Week. This would represent an increase of more than $3,000 from last year’s proceeds.

“I think $8,000 is a reasonable goal because Paint Pink It Week has really become one of our signature events in that it is something people look forward to and know us for,” RHA Vice President Lindsay Weber said. “Plus, we are really making an effort to publicize Paint It Pink Week and make it a bigger event, which will hopefully help us in attaining those goals.”

RHA President Zack Folk said he is hopeful the efforts made to grow Paint It Pink Week will prove successful and allow it to better achieve its goal of aiding breast cancer prevention.

“The hope of expanding Paint It Pink Week was to be able to raise even more money for breast cancer patients and research,” Folk said. “We wanted to make it something more than just a T-shirt sale for a good cause. We wanted to give it more attention and make it a bigger deal so that people will notice it and want to donate money. We want it to be something that everyone on campus is looking forward to every year.”