Belgrave Heights Christian School's Jenny Simmons & Sheren Whittaker and Extra Mile's Peter Jackel accepting the cheque

Belgrave Heights Christian School - Go the Extra Mile 2010

Approxiamately 160 primary school aged children participated in the School's Walk held during the month of May at the Belgrave Heights Christian School situated in the beautiful Dandenong Ranges. Children as young as 5 walked during lunchtimes and on weekends to reach their target of 50kms for the month. And every km walked contributed funds in sponsorship toward the Dalit children of India. Extra Mile's Peter & Samantha Jackel were invited along to a special Go the Extra Mile assembly, where the children who completed the 50km were recognised and presented with a certificate and showbag (containing the book "Even Donkey's Speak" and other goodies). A cheque for a whopping $4,847 was then presented to the Extra Mile organisers by Jenny Simmons. This has been the most successful fundraiser at BHCS yet and we thank all the teachers who helped out along the way. Special thanks to Michelle Bouma, Sherene Whittaker, Jenny Simmons and principal Andy Callow for their wonderful support and help to make the walk possible.

What a day!

Congratulations to the winners of this years Go the Extra Mile event - Natalie Esparon and Lisa Lucas ("Girls on a Mission") - who arrived at the Finish at 1.22pm (with a run time of 6:22). Both Natalie and Lisa are great friends of last year's winners (Robin Lennon and Kate Sanderson) and they managed to shave 51mins off their time to set a new Go the Extra Mile record. Congratulations to team of 4, "Gandalf and the Hobbits" who ran an admirable 6:49 to finish in 2nd place.

More than 260 walkers registered in this years event, and we could not have asked for a better day - 22c, a light breeze and the trail was bathed in beautiful sunshine for the day, and then lit by a full moon during the night.

The event was incident free with the majority of walkers finishing after dark between 7-8pm. The trail, beautiful and scenic, is also punishing for those who do not approach it with adequate training - and 2 cold and weary walkers learnt this lesson the hard way - extracted from the trail at 10pm with 5kms still to go. Our last walkers (The Mountain Goats) crossed the finish line at 11.32.

Well done to all our walkers!

Meet Abbey the "Lionheart"

A highlight of the morning's proceedings was meeting little 4 year old Abbey from regional Victoria - who along with mum, dad, siblings and uncle (from Mallacoutta) travelled all the way to Melbourne to take part in Go the Extra Mile. Little Abbey was so profoundly impacted by the terrible suffering of the Dalit children in India that she organised her own fundraiser. She (with the help of mum) made batches of Choc-Chip cookies and sold them at her local church raising more than $350.

She is pictured here along with mum (and flanked by Gospel for Asia Australia executive team, Geoff and Monica Darr, and Extra Mile's, Peter Jackel).

All of Abbey's money will be used to help the kids in India and on handing over her vegemite jar of notes and coins, she was presented with a certificate of appreciation by the GFA staff.

Way to go Abbey!

Did we phone you?

Our automated realtime Walker Tracking system was a new addition to the event this year and allowed supporters and friends to track the progress of walkers as they moved through the 50km trail. One walker told us that every time they arrived at a Pitstop they received a flood of SMS texts congratulating and encouraging them on. Our brand new system had a few teething problems and as a result a number of incorrect alerts were raised resulting in calls being made by concerned monitoring staff to walker's out on the trail. It seemed that many who were contacted were actually glad to see that we were following their progress - some have mentioned that they liked the idea of being "watched". This is of course, an integral part of our safety mechanisms working to keep you safe on the trail.

We'll iron those bugs out for the November Moonwalk!

Keep an eye on the website as we update the gallery with happy snaps and
also compile an Event Reviews page where you get to have your say about
the day's events.

Until then happy walking!