Find A Way Swim A Thon, Rickshaw Run, charity:water, Charlie Grosso and Sherry Ott

This note arrived in our inbox today. It is rare that we ever get something so lovely and inspiring, I wanted to share with you…

Two 7th grade classes at Iolani School in Honolulu did a swim-a-thon to fundraiser on our behalf, with parents and friends pledging $0.50 – $1.00 per lap, and this is a note we got from Kimi their teacher….

… one class did a total of 308 laps in 30 minutes (total of 16 kids in the class), and the other class did a total of 362 laps in 30 minutes (16 kids in this class too).  One 7th grade boy swam 43 laps in 30 minutes!!! His goal was to swim 30 laps (he’s on the ‘Iolani Swim Club) but when he hit 30 laps with time remaining, he yelled to me, “I”M GOING FOR 40!!!” And he hit 43 laps! It was sooo inspiring to watch. Even kids who couldn’t swim very well never gave up. We were inspired by Diana Nyad (I covered her swim from Cuba to Florida with the kids) and her motto of “Find a way!”  So I called it the Find a Way Swimathon. 🙂  These kids definitely “found a way” to accomplish a lot in 30 minutes! 🙂

Some of them were so exhausted that they told me the next day they went to bed at 6/7 pm and didn’t finish homework for any of their classes.  My response was “Ah, it’s ok. So you take the late grade for your homework.  You just made a huge difference in this world by providing clean water to people in third world countries!” 🙂

Take care and good luck with the race!

Aloha,

Kimi

These kids raised over $5000 on our behalf, which bring us $1300 shy of our overall goal. I am so proud and inspired by these kids.

If you’ve already contributed, thank you. Seriously and sincerely. If you forwarded our campaign with your friends, thank you!

If giving is not an option, I understand. If you can, click here and help us in this final push towards our $15,000 goal for charity:water.

The Rickshaw Run, Charlie Grosso and Sherry Ott

 

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