One junior high school is giving chronic disease a run for its money as it ramps up participation and expectations for its annual stationary bicycle based event.
The students of Vincent J. Maloney are in the final stages of training for the school’s second Cyclebetes Spin-a-Thon, a fundraiser for the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation. Grade 9 student Jaedon Leslie is just one of the many who will pedal for 10 hours on Thursday, April 25.
“We have a few students in our school that have diabetes. We thought not too many fundraisers look after juvenile diabetes so we want to help raise money for them,” he said.
The event is the brainchild of the school’s Go Make A Difference (a.k.a. Go MAD) option, a leadership class that also helps promote social responsibility and healthy lifestyles. To prove that they’ve got what it takes, the 30-plus students in the class are doing all of the organizing for the event that many of the other kids in the school will participate in.
“Last year when we were looking at our options, we wanted to look at something that these guys instead of just looking at leadership skills but to actually put it into action,” explained Kelly Lajois, the Go MAD teacher.
She added that Cyclebetes is a larger movement that has chapters in various locations but they aren’t all centrally co-ordinated. This allows the students to get the most benefits out of it from a leadership perspective too.
“It has a very good program to help young leaders put on an event like this. They organize everything. That’s the beauty of the whole thing. I plant the seeds of what they need to think about … it is amazing to see what these 14-year-old kids can do.”
To watch the success of the 2012 event, she said, was the highlight of her 15-year teaching career.
In its inaugural run, the event saw 42 teams come together to raise $20,000. This year, VJM is hoping to up the ante by reaching $25,000. With 57 teams of five people on board, it looks like they’ve got a good shot at it.
The real challenge will be with keeping the legs pumping. Leslie said that some students have shifts that run longer than half a school day.
“We got four hour shifts so it shouldn’t be that bad,” he said with aplomb, adding that he feels like he’s in good shape.
