Tag Archives: World Vision

Very Crazy Idea – I need YOUR Help

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Dear friend who may or may not occasionally run,

I decided to do something a little crazy, especially since I’ve been suffering from Plantar Fasciitis and my knee randomly swelled up on me recently.

I signed up a team for the Ragnar Relay – Great River edition. On August 20 and 21 this race goes from Winona, WI to Minneapolis, MN and traverses 193 miles in the process. With 12 people running out of 2 vans the average distance any one runner runs is 16.1 miles. Over three runs and two days that isn’t too scary of an idea. Throw in the fun of running together and 15 passenger vans and it is a piece of cake.

I signed up for four reasons, 1 – we saved a good chunk of money on registration fees 2 – I got two free Ragnar headlamps, which will come in handy during the night-time legs of the race 3 – Ragnar posts a fairly easy training plan that starts April 9 and 4 – children are still dying for lack of healthy water.

To make the race even more exciting I and (ideally) the whole team will be raising money for Team World Vision. All money raised this year for Team World Vision will support water projects in Kenya and other African countries. World Vision is an amazing organization and I’m sure you’ve heard of it, if you haven’t I’ll direct you to this series that I wrote on my blog. My goal is to raise $2,000 again this year, which averages out to about $10.37 per mile of the relay.

So what I need from you is two things. First, I need you to e-mail and say that you are excited to join Team Run the River for Africa. I actually have to add you to the team on Ragnar’s site, we’ll then make arrangements for you to get me your $85 registration fee and a signed waiver. Secondly, assuming you want to help support water projects in Kenya you’ll need to visit Team World Vision’s site and signup under our team.  (This isn’t a requirement but I’d like the entire team to be wearing Team World Vision jerseys.)

What do you think? Are you up to the challenge? I’m sure you are! We’ll iron out more of the logistical details over the next few months.

I’m pretty excited about this and look forward to running with you.

Nick

PS. As if that wasn’t crazy enough, Team World Vision is hosting a 13.1 mile race in Minneapolis on August 22. This is one of their big national events and a portion of all proceeds goes towards their water programs. Additionally, there will be a ton of World Vision focused stuff going on with hopefully 1,000’s of runners sporting TWV Orange. When I first came up with this idea, I was planning on doing the relay and finishing with the 13.1 mile event on Sunday. I’m taking a more cautious wait & see approach on that right now, but if you do it, I’ll probably do it too! If you were a little bit of a chicken and wanted to only commit to running the 13.1 that’s fine too, I suppose. You can still join my Team World Vision team!

PPS. Ragnar Relay rules require us to provide 3 volunteers to help throughout the weekend at aid stations, etc. We may also enjoy having additional drivers and nighttime bike riders/pacers. So let me know if your interested in that too!

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Running from Apathy

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rural school
Image by crossn81 via Flickr

Today, Dec 1 is World AIDS Day.  You really should read this article about hope from Relevant

I left Desalech with an amazing sense of hope, and also urgency. She had seen her life turn around. But I could only imagine how many other women there were like Desalech who desperately needed help: life-saving help.

I had traveled to Ethiopia with a couple of other World Vision staff who worked solely with Team World Vision. They basically recruited people to run marathons in honor of people like Desalech in Africa, raising awareness and asking for financial support in the process. This marathon thing, to me, was an absolutely ridiculous idea.

In seventh grade, I was the girl who faked being sick to avoid running one mile in gym class. Chalk it up to all the classic reasons: self-consciousness, fear of failure, embarrassment. I dreaded that one mile so much that I probably wasn’t actually faking sickness at all. The thought of running for even 10 (OK, maybe 14) minutes, coupled with the resulting humiliation of it all, was enough to make me physically ill. Let’s just say that my aversion to sports did not improve throughout high school. Or college.

Be sure to read the whole article.

[tags] Relevant, World AIDS Day, World Vision [/tags]

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World Vision Wrap-Up

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World Vision

Image via Wikipedia

I can’t say how thankful I am for everyone of you who supported me through the marathon and especially through my fundraising efforts for Team World Vision.  It was a humbling honor to run on behalf of my African friends and to share their stories with you over the last months.

It really has been fun to combine two of my passions into such a powerful event.  Thank you! I am excited to announce that as of writing this post, we have raised $2,086 for Team World Vision!!! This exceeded the $2,000 goal!!  Thank you!!

Below you will find a list of the posts where I shared about my passion for Africa and my experiences there.  You can also read all of the posts by clicking on this link.  In the order they were published:

That pretty much sums up Team World Vision.  I’m not sure when/if they actually close down the fundraising page, but you still have the opportunity to give today.  Thank you!!

Team World Vision

Team World Vision is a fund raising arm of the organization which uses ordinary people like me, to get ordinary people like you involved in ending poverty and injustice across the world. I have decided to commit the 26.2 miles of my first marathon to the memory of and in honor of the children I have met during my international travels. I can’t remember all of their names, but I have many pictures and stories.

On the right side of my blog there is a widget that will allow you to support me during this race or you can visit this secure page. I have set a goal of raising $2,000 which will help children have a chance at living to become adults across Africa.

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September Highlights

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I probably say that every month seems to fly by, well September was no different.  The middle school I work at started right after Labor Day and it has meant some busy weeks. It is good to have the students back though, they help give purpose to my work – since my job is focused on finding opportunities for volunteers and community organizations to engage them, this makes sense! I also celebrated my second anniversary!!

It is a little odd to interrupt the flow of marathon related posts considering that the marathon is a few short days away, but it is good to look back on the month while I still have it fresh in my mind.  As you know marathon training has been going well and weeks 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17 were successfully completed!

If I wasn’t out running a long run, it seemed like I was racing and happily setting PRs. This month I just raced the City of Lakes 25K – my furthest race distance and left feeling super excited. I really enjoy running in Minneapolis because there are so many different place to go running.  I just wish there was more dirt trails near my house! Some of my favorite places to run include the Minneapolis Riverfront and Pike Island.

I continued sharing about my experiences in Africa and different programs of World Vision.  I wrote about Hurricane Relief, making Caregiver Kits with Cindy McCain and Laura Bush, the World Vision Experience, and I shared from my journal some of my initial thoughts about Ghana.

Blogging is fun, so I’m glad to see that the new USATF CEO has started his own blog.

Last Year a friend wrote a guest review of the Lewis and Clark Marathon, it was much better than this year’s rain soaked affair.  My blog last year was called Run Central Indiana and it was the featured blog of the week over at the Phedippidations podcast.  Two important but often forgot about training tools are accellerations and strides.  I ran a DINO Series race (15K trail races) and wrote a nice review and had fun despite the muddy conditions. Finally, I shared what was currently on my mp3 player.  The list has changed some but some of the shows are still there!

Monthly Mileage

Running – 160 miles

Biking – 146 miles

[tags] Highlights [/tags]

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Reflections on South Africa

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I couldn’t find my journal from South Africa, so I’ll show you some pictures and tell a brief story about each.  This might be more enjoyable for you anyway!

In South Africa we spent a lot time in the classrooms at various schools. We split up into small groups and “taught” various classes. We talked about goal setting, child abuse, HIV/AIDS, drugs and other topics before opening the floor for questions they had for us. Many of these related to the USA, 9/11 (we went January of 2002), what we liked about South Africa, and more. This is a picture from one of the classrooms.

At a different school a group of kids really wanted me to go to the store with them. Ultimately, I relented and we walked a short distance to a “convenience” store. The big draw for the students was an arcade game. I can’t recall the name of the game, but I remember the shock I felt when I realized that these students were giving up their lunch money to play this stupid game. It was upsetting to me, but ultimately it was the student’s decision to make that choice. But why store owner would you do that to kids?

We did have time to stop and reflect on what we had experienced as well as the opportunity for some “touristy” type activities.  This included a little safari one day where we spent some time driving around in Safari style trucks, equipped with an elephant gun, just in case!  This was on of the giraffes we saw. We also saw some elephants, a lion, lots of warthogs, and some random other animals.

One week was spent in the northern part of South Africa, near the Botswana border. For the most part we ended up spending a large chunk of the week playing with kids. We spent time playing soccer with some older kids and visited a drop-in center for street children. These children had no place to go and couldn’t afford school.

The drop-in center provided food and structure for them. Staff would teach and counsel them, while helping them overcome their addictions. Most of these kids were addicted to sniffing glue – it helps take the edge off the hunger pangs.
We spent a few hours playing and interacting with them, before we were supposed to go to a village. As we were preparing to leave the center director decided that his kids should come with us and had them all get in the back of his pick-up truck. He then offered for a few of us to ride with them. We did and had the opportunity to interact with the kids a little more directly.

This is a group of villagers from the village we visited after the drop-in center. We spent a few hours playing soccer and interacting with some of the village youth. As we were leaving we saw this large group of villagers loading up a wagon with their personal belongings. Through our interpreters we discovered they were preparing to go out to the fields for a month. They were leaving their homes for a month to try to scrape out a living.
They were very enamored by us and wanted us to hold the babies, thinking we would be able to magically heal and bless them just by our touch. We struggled to communicate with them but some of the group was able to interact.

This last picture is a random village that we drove by. I put it here to show you some of the conditions that people live in around the world.It was seeing places like this that rocked my world and opened my heart to those who have nothing. Before this trip I knew I wanted to be involved with changing communities, but thought that meant the inner-city or rural American communities.

After seeing places like this I realized that there is something bigger that needs to be done around the world so that the poorest of the poor can have even the basic things that we take for granted.

Team World Vision

Team World Vision is a fund raising arm of the organization which uses ordinary people like me, to get ordinary people like you involved in ending poverty and injustice across the world. I have decided to commit the 26.2 miles of my first marathon to the memory of and in honor of the children I have met during my international travels. I can’t remember all of their names, but I have many pictures and stories.

On the right side of my blog there is a widget that will allow you to support me during this race or you can visit this secure page. I have set a goal of raising $2,000 which will help children have a chance at living to become adults across Africa.

[tags]  World Vision, Team World Vision, South Africa, Africa[/tags]

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