The Online Reflector

University of Indianapolis alumna Virginia Sanders came up with an idea in May to raise money for charity.  The idea includes auctioning off her first kiss and giving the proceeds to a cancer-related organization.  She launched the “Kiss Chronicles” in June.

Sanders, who came up with the idea shortly after her 30th birthday, said the idea just came to her.

“I just was trying to think of a solution to what I consider a problem that I want to get solved,” she said. “And then finally something came to me that I hadn’t thought of before, and that was, ‘Hey, you know what? All sorts of people sell odd things on Ebay.’ Why couldn’t I do that? Why couldn’t I auction off my first kiss and then the money could go to charity?’”

Sanders began the project by creating a blog on which she shares “kiss stories” that people have sent her and the mission of the Kiss Chronicles, among other things.

Sanders wants to have a “donation war” to raise money for her first kiss. For the donation war, Sanders said there will be a number of potential kissers, and people vote for the man they think should be the kisser by making a donation to the charity.

Sanders reached out around October to Chair of  the Theatre Department Jim Ream for help with the Kiss Chronicles.

“[At our first meeting] she just kind of laid out the idea [for the Kiss Chronicles] and where she had been with it so far and the progress that she had made,” Ream said. “And her request at that time was to see if she could get some sort of a forum with some of our theatre students who may be interested in assisting her.”

According to Sanders, she wanted to see whether the theatre students would be interested in helping her improve her blog.

“I invited them to do what theatre students do best, and that’s get creative and tell a story and entertain people with those stories, which is what I try to do on my blog,” she said. “I solicit kiss stories for the blog, but I need more kiss stories. What I did was I asked them to provide some of those stories, and whatever it is they could think of, either written, or video or other means of just providing entertaining kiss stories.”

Ream said that Sanders spoke to members of what the theatre department calls its Theatre Production class.

“We invited Virginia [Sanders] to come in and talk with them [students] a little bit at the beginning of the class and ask anybody who’s interested in helping to meet her afterwards,” Ream said.

Sanders said she has not yet received anything from the students she spoke with, but hopes to soon.

“I’m thinking I should give them a nudge at the start of the next semester and say, ‘Hey! Send me stories!’ Or if they need to, go out and kiss people and then send me stories. That would work, too,” she said. “I told them that would be a perfect excuse to go out and get extra kisses. I don’t know, I thought it would be fun homework.”

Currently, Sanders does not have a set date for ending the project. In the meantime, she encourages people to share their kiss stories with her.

“I’d love to get some stories that people would be willing to share for my blog that I can post for everyone to see,” she said. “There are all sorts of hysterical kiss stories out there. The problem is finding them.”

Sanders’ blog can be found at www.kisschronicles.com.