What a Relay Best Fund Raiser

by Jessie
(Berkely Springs)

In Berkeley Springs, West Virginia every year we hold a Relay for Life event at one of our schools in town on the track.

Relay for Life is a fund raising event for cancer awareness. It is when you get to sponsor a person to walk for money so when the person walks for as long as your bid is, the money you put down on that person is donated to help fight cancer. This year we held a costume event where the people walking got to put on silly costumes for fun on the walk.

We also have bake sales, car washes and the kids from the high schools art classes get to sell their art work and sculptures for the cause as well as the local animal shelter brings some of their animals to sell and every penny is donated to the help to fight cancer. We raised almost $10,000 this year; we have made more this year than any other year we have held the event.

For a small town it had a really great turn out. I am really proud that the people of our area can get together and help people. Even with the way the economy is going the local people still pitched in and helped and we raised a lot of money.

Editors Respond:
This sounds like a terrific fund raiser for a small town. We are so enthusiastic about towns using the facilities at their schools, one of their greatest public assets, for the general public good.

Too often in larger towns and cities, the school system is a bureaucratic island that charges the city government and also non-profit groups for the use of school property, even though in the case of a track, the impact no doubt was minimal.

Special events in smaller communities build what is called social capital, which is just a fancy way of saying that your network of friends gets to meet my network, and we strengthen the bonds of friendship among people who maybe were only acquaintances before, or who are introduced to one another for the first time at the event.

I hope that your town is able to attract more and more people from neighboring towns to what truly is a fund-raiser of universal interest. That qualifies you for our best fund-raising event category for sure.

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