www.studentshelpinghonduras.org
"A Hope for Honduras"
SHH Walkathon Reaches Goal of $200,000!
SHH workers arrived bright and early to prepare for the second annual Students Helping Honduras Walkathon. After 6 months of planning and over 7 hours of work in the morning/afternoon to prepare for the event, Junk Science, the opening band of the day, struck a chord and began to play music for the crowd of 2000 people, who came from all over the country and were preparing to walk to help raise money for the refugee village of Siete de Abril.
At around 2pm the band faded out as Shin Fujiyama walked on stage with his sister Cosmo, and began to give his speech. “We are walking for unity today…Doris Buffett pledges to chip in $5 for every person who walks an extra 5 miles for Tech!†Doris Buffett pledged to give an extra $5 to the Virginia Tech Memorial fund for each person who walked the full 10 miles. Soon after a representative from GrabLife GiveLife came on stage to present a check for $20,000 to the walkathon fund as a result of winning an online voting contest, where students from across the east coast voted for their upcoming favored charity event.
Shin's brother, Gaku came to the event pumped up to walk with his Virginia Tech team, even after Monday's horrific shootings at Tech. Cosmo then took the microphone as she said “There are things like what happened Monday which we cannot control, but what we can control today is that we are unified to help others.â€
The band began to countdown to the start of the event, 4..3..2..1 as Shin, Cosmo, Doris, Gaku, and Strider held hands as they lead the group of almost 2000 down campus walk. Past the fountain at Monroe Hall, where there was free BBQ, live performances, and a station for free professional massages. Walkers circled around the fountain at the Jepson Science center, where there was another acoustic band performing, and walked back to the start where walkers received a rubber band to help them count the number of laps they were walking. There was also live video feed from Honduras , where walkers could not only see the children from the village of Siete de Abril , but the children could see us as well. We were able to visually communicate with the children we were trying to help during the walkathon.
Near the end of the event, Shin came onto the stage to tell walkers that we had reached our goal of $100,000 dollars, by the end of the event we had raised $118,243 just from the donations brought in the day of the walkathon. Doris Buffett has agreed to bring the total up to $200,000 dollars now, with the matching grant!www.studentshelpinghonduras.org