Race for Impact!

Hope everyone had a restorative weekend. First, a very huge thank you and congratulations to our Impact Network Race for Impact Marathon Runners – Alex Mayer, Caroline Pidgeon, Christina St. John, Katie Palmer, Laura Smith and my very own dad, Dilip Patel! Together they raised over $35K for Impact Network programs in Zambia.

Marathon Sunday in New York City is always a little bit magical. Everyone has an extra hour of sleep, New Yorkers are cheering each other on by name, and everyone is kind. I was so impressed by Kenya’s Hellen Obiri’s amazingly strong finish to overtake two rivals in the last mile of the marathon. Tamirat Tola of Ethiopia seemed like he had beat his rivals by running hard from the start and ended up breaking the course record. Marcel Hug and Catherine Debrunner of Switzerland, won the wheelchair races, with Debrunner breaking a course record. But more than all of the records being broken, and the elite runners, what moves me most is the 50,000+ people on the course, all setting a goal, training, and setting out to do their best. It’s the people who write their names on their t-shirts so we know who to cheer for, and it’s their friends and family racing all over the subway to try and catch them. It’s the fastest runners of the marathon who go home, get rested, and then return at 8pm so that the last finishers of the NYC marathon have people cheering them on as they cross the finish line. Truly, it’s all of the little stories that truly make the NYC marathon special.

Stories like my dad – who I’ve talked about in relation to my work with Impact Network before. My father was born in Uganda and spent over 10 years of his life there. He left Africa on October 4, 1972 at the age of 23, when Idi Amin was in power. He arrived in snowy Winnipeg, Canada, and began his life with $2 in his pocket and his diploma – in a new country, with different customs, and no family or friends around him. For much of my childhood, my father told me the story of how he came to Canada and was able to build a life for his new wife and children, from just that $2. He was able to do that because his parents believed then, as my parents believe now, that there is nothing more valuable than a good education. That what was in his brain was more valuable than any amount in his pocket could ever be. This is why we do the work that we do – because fundamentally, we believe that every child deserves access to a quality education, like the one I was lucky enough to receive.

Perhaps because of his life experience, my dad is amazingly persistent – he’s never met a challenge he hasn’t been able to tackle. He first ran the marathon in 1985 (I think!), when I was just 3 or 4 years old, training during the cold winters of Winnipeg and getting up very early to run. He’s since climbed the base camp of Everest, Machu Picchu, Kilimanjaro, and so many more. But almost four decades after his first, he ran the NYC marathon today! Watching him speed walk at a pace most of us could not run, I was struck by how proud I was of him, and how each runner out there has an incredible story that got them to today.

So truly – thank you to all of the runners who went out there today and did their best! And especially the six runners who helped support Impact Network today – thank you for choosing us and thank you for your support. I would be remiss not to send a shout out to Katie Kerr, our VP of External Relations. These charity slots are extremely hard to get and our Race for Impact program has grown a ton under her leadership over the last year! Thanks, Katie!

-Reshma