William Kelly
Staff Writer
Markeisha Robinson wanted her 21st birthday to be more than just a celebration of her born day. Robinson used the occasion to bring awareness to many life-threatening and important issues affecting her peers and community during the week of Oct. 13-17.
Robinson, a junior communicative disorders major from Greenville, Miss., using Instagram and the hashtag #MarkeishaCares, instructed her followers to perform certain acts or tasks and post them to Instagram to promote different causes.
“I wanted to turn 21 with a purpose, you only turn 21 once so I wanted to make sure that I was going out with serving others,” said Robinson. “I basically wanted to do something with meaning and do something to cater to other people.”
Robinson reached out to students with the help of her awareness committee which consisted of 30 people who assisted Robinson with dorm raids and social media blasts.
Robinson’s week consisted of Monday’s “Pink Out” movement which required participants to dress in pink to bring awareness to breast cancer. Tuesday was “Red lip Selfie” movement in which participants brought awareness to AIDS. Wednesday brought awareness to domestic violence as participants were asked to write a message in the palm of their hand about domestic violence. Thursday, Robinson’s actual birthday, was used to post a selfie telling why you love yourself. Finally, on Friday, Robinson walked the Gibbs-Green Walkway asking students to pledge to not bully.
“October is full of awareness and these topics are some of the biggest that needed attention,” said Robinson. “We need to raise awareness about breast cancer, it is big and it is killing so many people.”
Robinson added: “Domestic violence is a huge topic, Latasha Norman is from my hometown and our families are very close. When that incident happened, I was only in middle school but it really hit home for me so I wanted to show people that you need to speak up and stop the violence,” said Robinson.
Parri Swinson, a freshman chemistry/pre-medicine major from Atlanta, Ga. was touched by Robinson’s actions.
“Markeisha’s Awareness Week helped me support awareness to things in our community that mean a lot to me. I was inspired to maybe do my own awareness week for my birthday,” said Swinson. “She is such a role model and I had to help out any way possible.”
Henry Goss, a junior mass communications major from Jackson, Miss. explains how Robinson’s awareness week was special to him.
“It made me appreciate life more and it showed me that no matter what, you can make a difference in the world,” said Goss. “It inspired me to become more conscious of the things affecting citizen’s everyday that I was not previously aware of.”
Robinson is ecstatic to have met her goals and is proud to have touched so many people.
“I met my goal, Wow! I met beyond my goal. When I looked at the hashtag I saw that over 400 people participated and that was far beyond my goal,” said Robinson. “I wanted a lot of people to participate but I honestly did not expect that much, it was amazing and very overwhelming.”
She does not plan on ending her awareness movement so soon.
“I kind of encouraged some people from my hometown to do an entire week for the month of November and they asked me for my assistance,” said Robinson. “I’m not going to spoil it for them but it will be coming around the month of November so stay tuned.”
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