#sconainitiative

[facesofedmonton]

“At the end of the twenty-four hours, you’re very tired. Very tired. But when the final cheque is revealed you often find a last bit of energy to celebrate with everyone ... The teams are seven to ten people and we switch on and off for the twenty-four hour period, normally doing half-hour or hour-long shifts. One person rode for six hours one year, but that’s kind of crazy; I could never do that.”

“We have entertainment on stage. Last year we had a hypnotist and we do karaoke and stuff. At 3 a.m. when everyone’s getting really tire, we do a Mario Kart tournament which gets projected on screens beside the stage. There’s also always music going so you’re never bored. There’s a lot going on and a lot of stimulation.”

[facesofedmonton]

“I got involved with Bikeathon because I wanted get involved with my community, especially my school community. Beyond the Bikeathon event itself, we do a lot of stuff leading up to the event to raise money and awareness. Every year we pick a different charity to support.”

“I really enjoy the sense of community and the mass participation. It’s very special—you don’t get that in every school where you have 1200 kids come out to support something—it’s something special to Strathcona High School.”

“This year the charity is the Jack Davis Hope Foundation. They are a local organization run by volunteers and they help families pay for the cost associated with caring for their ill children. It might be putting a wheelchair lift in their house or something like that. We had twenty-five charities apply to Scona and the leadership team narrowed it down to four and from there we did a school-wide vote and the Jack Davis Hope Foundation won the vote.”

[facesofedmonton]

“We get t-shirts made every year and each year they have a different design and represent a different campaign. One of the years we built a school in an HIV orphanage in Kenya. A few of us traveled there to make sure the funds were used appropriately. And from there it went, and went, and went.”

“The campaign is called the 'Hope in Motion' campaign, that’s really the inspiration for the logo. The logo itself was a design competition for the grade tens. That’s how the grade tens dip their toe into this. The grade elevens run all the workshops and then the grade twelves run everything else to do with the campaign. It’s quite an amazing event. Our school motto is ‘as one who serves’ which I think these kids wear with pride.”

[facesofedmonton]

“For me, there’s so much more going on than the money we fundraise. What I find really exciting is the lessons the students are learning as they plan the event. You can never anticipate what sort of conversation you’ll have when you go to a company and ask for a donation—you’re essentially working like a mini-entrepreneur. When students come back and they’re super proud of themselves, it makes my day. When they see their own capacity as youth, it’s so exciting. They’re giving back, and I think it causes ripple effects. We become very close with the students we teach because we work to such a crazy capacity, so when you hear what they’re doing later on and sometimes they’ve gone on to work at some of the organizations we’ve assisted or they’re doing work around the world, it’s so cool when you hear their stories and you realize that it was maybe inspired from the time we all sat in a circle and decided what we were going to do for this fundraiser. Then they took some of their lessons and they’re teaching other people. Past students have literally contributed around the world ... and I love hearing those stories.”

[periwinklehipo]

Personal Update time

I don't think I've done an personal update on tumblr before so here goes nothing.

My school is doing its annual global initiative this month and I decided I should take part in it. My school chose to support the Bissel Center in Edmonton and Change for Children in Ecuador by collecting donations. My team, Tetris (I know its a weird name but its the best my friends and I could come up with), started up an online page so if any of you wonderful followers want to help out you can donate towards my teams goal of $1000 dollars. Here is the link: http://fundraise.sconainitiative.ca/up-to-the-challenge (hopefully this works, if not I'll fix it).

I know thats its not really a personal update but it probably the most stressful thing happening in my life currently (closely followed by family, school, and my stupid cold that won't go away). Probably not going to any other personal things for a while so enjoy my constant stream of queued posts.

~Peri