RunVermont Miles for a Mission
Stowe Weekend of Hope
One Mill St. Suite 301, Burlington, VT 05401
Contact Name: Cindy Delaney; cindy@stowehope.org; 802-865-5205
The Stowe Weekend of Hope is an annual forum for education, enlightenment, and recreation for cancer patients and survivors with any type of cancer…and their families. The focus is to inspire, educate, and celebrate the lives of people living with cancer. This unique event addresses the complex challenges and needs of people with cancer at any stage in their disease.
Cancer presents families with many challenges – physical, emotional, spiritual, and financial. Physicians and other speakers donate their time to give talks, and Stowe’s hospitality businesses give complimentary lodging and a portion of their profits during the weekend. The event is free for first time attendees, and available for a nominal fee to returning participants.
The Stowe Weekend of Hope Plan: The past few years have been challenging for us to raise money to fund the event, which is free to first timers and their families. Pharmaceutical funding has been declining, and other foundation funds have been more limited. We have been looking for a team based, healthy way to raise money for the event, so we can accommodate more cancer survivors and their families in future years.
Relay runners involved with Miles for a Mission are expected to raise a minimum of $500 each or $2500 per team. We will recruit runners from our planning committee, past and current participants, past and current speakers at the event, Stowe business owners who have been involved in the Weekend of Hope, and family members who have experienced our Weekend.
Last year, we did a morning walk on the final day, which included over 50 participants. One of our speakers, George P. Kansas, a cancer survivor and marathon runner, and author of the book “Jumper Cables for the Marathon Runners Soul” had the idea that we could encourage participants recovering from cancer to participate in endurance running events. When RunVermont came out with the Miles for a Mission Program, we knew we had a good match.
The funds will be used to offset program costs, facility costs, meals and events throughout the weekend, and outreach efforts to encourage survivors to attend the weekend. Approximately 35% of our attendees come from Vermont; 55% from other New England states and New York. 85% of our speakers are from Vermont. We will be expanding our outreach this year to more rural areas of the state to encourage more Vermonters to attend.
All runner recruitment will be done via email and personal requests, and we will have a blog/chat room where participating runners can connect to share their training stories, coordinate training together, and encourage each other throughout the training process. (you’re here! yay!)
