PWP benefits from the Edge Rat Race 2010

There is a big difference between being a runner and a charity recipient in the Edge Rat Race. As a runner, you are high on adrenaline and you sweat buckets as you try to make it to the finishing line. As a recipient of the Edge Rat Race, you are also running on adrenaline mentally and you sweat buckets in the heat as you wait for the race to be over but the difference is that as a recipient, you already know you are a winner from the minute you participate!

For Parents without Partners (PWP), the thrill was to be a part of this pulsating, fun, adrenaline driven annual event. I’d forgotten how much fun it was and participating in the 2010 event brought it all back with a vengeance. Years back when I first joined the Edge netvalue team, one of the first things newcomers have to do in the Edge is to run for the Rat Race and I gamely took up the challenge while my other colleague Risen chose the easier route – cover the event as a journalist.

In the end, the running was the easier part, you could run or walk and I did both, beating our dispatch boy by several lengths too! This year, PWP was chosen as one of the 20 recipients for the charity run and we were given each a table to display our creative wares and brochures so that the runners and their corporate supporters could have a better idea of what we the charity organizations that they were raising funds for, were actually doing.

Sad to say, only a handful of curious supporters and cheerleaders stopped at the row of tables where we were situated but undaunted, yours truly decided to be more proactive. Armed with my faithful SLR, I marched up to the stage and proceeded to take photos of the various groups that were being photographed by the Edge’s official photographer. When each team came down, I handed over my business card and told them that I had the photos if they wanted and to keep us in mind if they had items they wanted to let go. How’s that for pro-active promotion?

In the evening, we the 20 charity organizations were feted to a lovely dinner in an open amphitheatre and each organization was presented with a mock cheque for the projects we had planned to implement. In our case, we had presented three different projects first off was the Brilliant Light Homework Centre – a homebased study centre for kids who are unable to attend school due perhaps to a lack of birth certs or have been expelled from school for various reasons.

The second project is the Hungry Hearts Project – a soup kitchen concept that we believe will help ensure there are less hungry kids and their parents at Lembah Subang. The last project is the Photography with Passion project that we hope to implement during the end year school holidays where the children of single parents can learn photography and develop a new interest and new skills to help keep them off the streets.

This donation from the Edge is the first of many more fund raising activities PWP intends to undertake to ensure we have the funds we need to empower single parents in need to live more independent lives. We believe always in doing our best and leave God to do the rest!