There may be individual Sisters who run marathons, but only in China is there a marathon for Sisters. there there is no event like this anywhere in the world. It is particularly odd that it would develop in China. But we are here, we are not going away, and this year there are 64 Sisters practicing every day to compete and also using this (for them) unconventional means to raise money during the Marathon scheduled for October 14th. You can follow their doing on line and we hope you will participate by donating or even running.
BRICKS Great Wall Appeal Building a Great Wall of Charity in China, Brick by Brick
Its purposes are
- Support existing organisations (or encourage new start ups) to tackle local issues in rural China in an efficient, transparent and accountable fashion.
- Use the potential of the Internet to introduce the needs of China’s marginalised to an international audience.
It has been an entirely unexpected development from two middle-aged men wanting to have an excuse to get fit. Who could have known it would give rise to Sisters’ Run and create an entirely new form of fundraising for Faith based Charities in China.
Some history…
In 2008 Joseph Loftus and Aidan Duffy ran in the Beijing Marathon to buy beds for a Nursing Home in Xingtai, Hebei. It was a fledging project of the newly founded BRICKS Great wall Appeal and a personal milestone for Joseph, director of BRICKS and a recently reformed Couch Potato. The Sisters in Xingtai were very grateful for the beds, but the success created a dilemma as BRICKS was founded to encourage local organisations to do their own fundraising, not to do the fundraising for them. Sisters needed to do it for themselves.
In the years since, Sisters’ Run has become an increasingly important part of the racing calendar. In the early years, it was hard to sell the idea to Sisters unused both to the idea of exercise (Mens San is corpore sano is an unknown concept here) and to actually doing their own fundraising. With each passing year things have gotten easier though and this year we are blessed to have found a local partner, Jinde Charities who will take over the development of the run long term. BRICKS now only complimenting the domestic fundraising drive by providing a channel for foreign donors to run and or donate to any of the 30 projects participating. Because of the links to religion, we had tried to work below the radar, but last year an extraordinary act of providence forced us to make ourselves know to the Marathon organisers, and eventually received an award for our well run fundraising campaign. We soon got used to our place in the sun and last year even made CNN!
In 2008 Joseph Loftus and Aidan Duffy ran in the Beijing Marathon to buy beds for a Nursing Home in Xingtai, Hebei. It was a fledging project of the newly founded BRICKS Great wall Appeal and a personal milestone for Joseph, director of BRICKS and a recently reformed Couch Potato. The Sisters in Xingtai were very grateful for the beds, but the success created a dilemma as BRICKS was founded to encourage local organisations to do their own fundraising, not to do the fundraising for them. Sisters needed to do it for themselves.
BRICKS Great Wall Appeal, Building a Great Wall of Charity in China, Brick by Brick
100027 Beijing, Chaoyang District, Shunyuan Street
Sanyuanli No.14, Xinhe Dasha Rm.4008
Tel. and Fax: 0086-10-64650959
Tags: Appeal, China, inventive to infinity, Sisters
