NYC Marathon, and more

When I started, the idea was to update this blog every week; I have failed.  What with a personal blog, with facebook, with Shoe4Africa facebook... it is not that we don't have great stuff to report on, it is 'do I post the same things on all?'  It becomes acrobatic trying to keep up.. and I am juggling a million things.  1.  We have a 5k race in Manhattan and my big job right now is doing that; we need runners to come and run it, so please, if possible go to www.newyork5k.com and come and run with us on Dec 2nd at 10 a.m. in the morning on a flat, fast 5k.  It is rumored we will have a Sports star running too from a major baseball team in NYC.

2. We have 52 runners running in the Pepsico Shoe4Africa team at the NYC Marathon.  If you are running this event then please pop by the expo and say hello to us at our booth.  See the booth's art work below;

3.  We have our 8th Annual Shoe4Africa 5k in Kenya coming up.  Just ordering the bibs, pins for that one right now.  And our wristbands.  Where have all the years gone to?

4. Sadly we did not win the Kjaer & Kjaer pick-up truck competition.  We were the second to last team to enter and had half the time the other teams had to collect votes yet climbed past nearly 70-teams into third place.  In the final round, the judges voted, we lost out but there you go.  However the virla support and the messages of goodwill doing this were outstanding and re-affirmed by belief we are doing something special.

5. Our third & fourth schools are close to completion and we plan to open both facilities in time for the new school year over in Kenya, in January.  Both schools will immediately be filled, from classes one right up to eight.  This means we will be impacting another 1,000 kids per year.  Some charities are excellent at calculating numbers, showing impact - sadly I am lacking in this, but one day I am going to work it all out.  But what I can tell you is that with school #2 they were position 42/47 in 2011.  When we knocked down the old school, built a new one, a proper one, renamed the school and re-opened we are now currently climbing and at the last test after half the academic year were number 17/47

6. I know this one is going to get a blog post all to itself but... can you believe it is going to happen?  On January 1st 2013 watch this space - East Africa, with all its rich history, has never had a public children's hospital.  Currently there is only one public children's hospital in the entire region of Sub Saharan Africa, down in South Africa - Capetown.  That is a population of some 450-million kids.  Hot on our heels is Nelson Mandela who has plans to build another in South Africa to create, in his words, (his) Greatest legacy.

7. Onwards, as you can guess this is only 2/3rds of what we are doing from now till Jan.... (please) stay tuned