If you wake up this Saturday in the sleepy hours of the morning, make sure to take notice to the many volunteers outside walking to help fight cardiovascular disease and stroke. Walking in full force once again, the American Heart Association’s annual “Start! Heart Walk” event will take place this Saturday on the Boca campus. Activities will begin at 7 a.m. and the walk itself will begin at 9 a.m. President Brogan himself will be there as this year’s honorary chair of the event. As honorary chair, Brogan has set up many goals for the event – one of which is to raise at least $20,000 in proceeds to go towards research, education and community programs to help combat heart disease and stroke, the No. 1 and No. 3 leading killers, respectively, of American men and women. However, to accomplish this goal, Brogan needs walkers and lots of them. That’s why he has also set a goal for at least 200 walkers to participate this weekend. Many of the faces should be familiar, that’s because the main groups participating in this weekend’s event are campus fraternities and sororities.

Many representatives of their respective sorority chapters even got together Wednesday night planning and decorating their own heart walk shirts and bandanas in the Majestic Palm room.

“It’s just a great reason to get together,” says Senior Janna Fowler of Delta Phi Epsilon.

Freshman Nicole Giarratano, a coordinator of Wednesday’s planning meeting says this is a “perfect opportunity to help out in the community.”

Also happening this Saturday, students will have the opportunity to “win” a raffle for President Brogan’s parking spot in front of the Boca Student Union for the semester. This is all part of the pre-walk festivities that being at 7 a.m. Raffle tickets will cost $5 each and will be limited to five per person. These proceeds will be only one part of the many forms of donations people can offer during this event.

Put on by the American Heart Association, this event will be one the of many heart walks being held over this weekend. With an expected 1,000,000 people participating in the overall country-wide event this weekend, you can bet that the beat of the heart will be moving.

For more information, log on to http://www.fau.edu/heartwalk or contact Gisele Galoustian at (561) 297-2010 or [email protected] if you’d like to volunteer.