Miranda's big walk for a big cause
Participants ready to set of in the Big 50 Walk for Joytown.
More than 70 people took part in Miranda Corps' fourth annual Big 50 Walk for Joytown on 25 October.
Participants had a choice of completing either a 50km walk, a 25km walk or a 5km family event, following a course in Sydney's Sutherland Shire.
So far, more than $6000 has been raised, which will go towards The Salvation Army’s Joytown Children’s Home in Kenya.
“There is a series of small to medium projects over the coming months and years that we’re working on with Joytown and the Salvation Army International Development office (SAID),” says Miranda Corps Officer Lieutenant Brad McIver.
The Big 50 Walk is strongly supported by the community, with around three-quarters of the participants not part of the Miranda Corps. Most of the participants were from local walking clubs and gyms, as well as a team from the local Westpac branch that the corps has a good relationship with.
The walkers created a lot of public interest as they completed their courses, which ran through shopping centres and along the foreshore of Cronulla beach.
Lieut McIver says part of the success of the walkathon is that is connects with the lifestyle of the community. “To come up with the event like the Big 50 Walk for Joytown, which taps into the active lifestyle of our local community, is obviously going to be a winner.”
Miranda Corps member Bec Cundasamy, a volunteer organiser of the Big 50 Walk for Joytown since it began, has a lot of pride in her church.
“I feel very proud of this event. The fact that people from our church have gone and told their family and friends that this money will genuinely make a difference is fantastic. We can show people what the money they donate and raise is spent on,” she says.
Miranda Corps members were heavily involved in many ways on the day, with people manning pit stops along the walk, running a barbeque at the corps and providing activities for the younger children who were eagerly waiting for their families to cross the finish line.
Lieut McIver says their church would like to encourage other corps to find ways to connect with their community.
“It’s about our heart and passion for the kids at Joytown and the fact that our community understands. They understand why we’re passionate about those things and that we’re motivated by our relationships with Christ,” he says.
The corps sends a mission team to Joytown every second year. Joytown Children’s Home is located in Thika, just outside of Kenya’s capital city of Nairobi, and is home to about 300 physically disabled children.
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