Eliza Roche

Day 1: conquered a mountain (the easy part) and began the search for donations (the hardest part!)

Today is the first day of The Run Beyond Project’s virtual run. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be running a very long way to raise money for a really worthwhile project. 

The Run Beyond Project empowers high school students from a variety of backgrounds/corcumstances to train for and run in a Goal Race. Over 600 students have graduated through our program so far, including 156 indigenous students, 57 students from refugee backgrounds, and 86 who have, or have previously, been in out-of-home care, as well as students impacted by numerous other factors such as exposure to discrimination and long-term parental unemployment.

The program supplies them with a uniform, shoes, race entries, transport and accomodation. It sounds small to most people, but some kids only own one shirt and a pair of hand-me-down sneakers that are 2 sizes too small and covered in holes. Some have never been to a city like Sydney and most have never had the positive emotional and social support that the program offers. Imagine how cool it would be for a student to travel to Sydney and race in a world major like Sydney Marathon. The program helps young people progress towards a goal, and acquire valuable skills which can be applied to enable them to excel in all areas of their lives, beyond the context of running.

Don’t just like this post, skip your iced matcha latte and send $5 my way to help change some lives. 

A $20 donation buys a shirt for a student (trust me, their teachers will thank you for this donation! 👃) 

$50 buys a whole uniform

$75 buys a race entry 

$150 buys a pair of shoes from On and Pace Athletic