On Saturday April 30, Villa Maria’s Interact Club hosted their inaugural Miles for Missions 5K event at Frontier Park, as well as a Chinese Auction. The event took place at 9 a.m., and all of the proceeds for both the 5K and the Chinese Auction benefited the EBAC Orphanage in Haiti and USCRI Erie.
The 5K was highly successful with over 70 runners taking part in the run. The Chinese Auction also had an incredible turn-out, with hundreds of tickets being bought. This money will benefit the EBAC Orphanage and USCRI Erie significantly.
The EBAC Orphanage in Haiti is supported by the Pittsburgh Kids Foundation, and it has been running since the 80s. Two missionaries, Kathy and Alice, have been running the orphanage since it began, and the orphanage supports over 100 children. The children attend school on the grounds as well.
USCRI Erie, which stands for the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, is a non-profit organization that provides help for refugees who are settling in Erie. These refugees come primarily from Bhutan, Eritrea, Somalia, Iraq, Ukraine, and more. These newly-settled refugees receive a comprehensive set of services, including: housing placement, cultural orientation, school enrollment, health services, and more. Especially with the destruction that is currently happening in Ukraine, this organization needs all the help it can get. The money from the Miles for Missions 5K will help both of these organizations significantly.
Villa mathematics teacher Mrs. Tucker was one of the main organizers for the event, as well as Mrs. Grenci, and it was their job to make sure that every detail was ready for the event to take place. Even though it was a lot of work, Mrs. Tucker is grateful for the good it brought to both organizations.
“For as much work that goes into organizing an event, especially the first inaugural year of an event, I really enjoyed working closely with Mrs. Grenci to make this a real 5K,” Mrs. Tucker said. “I also enjoyed getting to learn more about the mission of UCRI Erie and the work they are doing for refugee families living in Erie. I also got to meet other people who have been to EBAC orphanage in Haiti, the same orphanage that I go to in the summers to help at their school. Lastly, I truly enjoyed seeing so many people come together to meet a common goal, have fun, and get some exercise on a beautiful morning. We cannot express our gratitude enough for the generosity and support that so many people showed to help make Miles for Missions a big success.”
Villa mathematics and theology teacher Mrs. Grenci worked with Mrs. Tucker to organize this event. Since this was the first year for this event, everything needed to be organized from scratch.
“We tried to do the event in the spring of 2020, but with COVID, this was the first time it actually happened,” Mrs. Grenci said. “We were lucky to have had so much planning done from 2020, but this year we still had to confirm the location, determine who proceeds would go to, contact Erie Runners Club who did the timing, renew the website through RunSignUp, monitor registrations, work with t-shirts, get race food and prizes, organize the basket raffle, and much more. Luckily, Mrs. Tucker and I are a great team together.”
What Mrs. Grenci enjoyed the most about this event was the actual execution of it.
“I’ve completed various 5K events as a runner or walker, so it was a fun experience to be on the other side of the event as a host,” Mrs. Grenci said. “It was a great feeling to realize how much of a donation we made for the two organizations that we put the event on for.”
Mrs. Tucker, Mrs. Grenci, and the Villa Interact Club are ecstatic about how the Miles for Missions 5K went, and they hope to continue it in the future.
