St. John's Marathon Combines Fundraising with Acts of Service

(The following is a release from St. John the Baptist Catholic Church, which runs St. John's School in Savage.)

St. John’s School students, staff, and families in Savage participated in our 32^nd annual Marathon for Non-Public Education last Friday. Although the weather turned much cooler, it was an incredible event.

Our students walked the Marathon route in the morning, participated in several different service opportunities, and concluded the day with a great pep fest with Goldy Gopher. Our students, staff, and parent volunteers accumulated over 1,000 hours of service during the Marathon.

St. John’s Preschool put together 85 birthday bags for children that never receive gifts on their birthdays. Also, our kindergartners stuffed 60 backpacks full of school supplies for those that cannot afford school supplies and our first through third graders packaged 107 military boxes that will be shipped overseas. One of the service men—Aaron Osgood—who actually received a few of our boxes while stationed in Iraq came and spoke with our students. The rest of the grades went to different Feed My Starving Children locations in the Twin Cities.

The Marathon for Non-Public Education is an event that occurs all over Minnesota as well as throughout the United States. On the first weekend of October, many schools take part in fundraising activities. Our St. John's Marathon has morphed over the past 32 years from a morning walk to a more serviced focused day.

A new title that was shared was "Marathon of Service," which might be a better description of the event. This event is our largest fundraiser for our school and takes the place of other things such as selling wrapping paper and coupon books. Although we do not give directly back to our donators in product, we hope the idea of "paying it forward" to the community at large in terms of our service projects will be a fantastic return.