We had an orientation meeting last night. There were about fifteen or so women there - which is in no way indicative of the number of people who will be at the walk. They gave some statistics. Over the six years that the walk has been held, there has been something like $295,000,000 (yes, two hundred ninety-five MILLION dollars) raised for breast cancer research. There have been 92,000 people who have walked a total of 4.9 million miles for this.
There are two different kinds of volunteers - walkers and crew. The crew are the people who make the whole thing happen; picking up trash and handing out water and manning the sweep buses and helping pitch tents. It takes about four hundred crew members to put one of these things together. Crew members, unlike walkers (who commit to raising $2,200 each) do not have to raise anything. Well, the Michigan crew, last year, collectively raised $110,000. How cool is that?
The Better Business Bureau has a standard that they set for charities to meet in order to receive a nod of approval from the BBB. The charity must use no more than 35% of the money collected for administrative purposes - in other words, 65 cents out of every dollar must go directly to the beneficiaries of the charity. The Susan G. Komen for the Cure has its own internal standard of no more than 25% of the money going for administrative costs. This is just the standard - in practice, the Foundation does even better than that. Over the last few years, the organization has maintained a level of eighty-two cents out of every dollar going directly to the beneficiaries. Most of the money funds research, although there are some local organizations that benefit.
The meeting was terrific. They talked about how the walk would work - opening ceremonies, and the walk itself, and the pit stops, and cheering stations. There was a video that they showed of people on the walk and in camp and at the opening and closing ceremonies...there was not a dry eye in the place.
I'm really excited about all of this, and I can't wait to meet more of these people. Some of the walkers are men. About 1-2% of breast cancer cases also occur in men - it is not exclusive to women. One of the people at the meeting last night, in fact, lost her grandfather to the disease.
It hasn't always been easy, even so far. There have been a couple of times when I said to myself, "Ok, who am I kidding? There's no way I'll ever be able to do this." This is by far the biggest physical undertaking I've ever attempted. I'm not a runner, not a marathoner (in fact, I've met marathoners who say that people who do the 3-Day are nuts). But sitting there in that meeting last night, I knew I wasn't going to give up. I'm going to see this through, if I don't walk again afterward for a month.
But hey, if anyone knows a massage therapist in the Detroit area that would be willing to donate a couple hours' massage on the day after I finish this, I sure wouldn't turn it down
Step count today: Nothing. Not counting it.
Yesterday's was 7415
1 comment:
Step count matched.
<3
Post a Comment