Special Event - Charity ride for Ronald McDonald House

Our special event idea started in term 2 with the idea to get a big group of students participate in a riding event to raise money for the Ronald McDonald House. A student in our school needed to move to Perth with his family to receive chemo and radiation therapy for a cancer.

The idea started as a seed and grew when a small committee was formed. During term 3 the committee started to have ideas for the event and with the help of our teacher we planned a 2 day bike ride, riding the Munda Biddi trail that runs from Albany to Denmark. The ambitious plan included a second day where we would cycle loop around Denmark.

Students in year 8 – 10 were asked to express interest and a group of 18 students took up the challenge. Early term 4 we started to train and had 3 Saturday morning training rides, the reason being to practice riding long distances.

The charity ride coincided with the McHappy day, and the local newspaper came to the school to interview the committee and a great article was written up for the paper, the Albany Advertiser. They also used their social media page to promote the ride. In addition the committee placed notices in our weekly school newsletter and sought sponsors for the ride.

Lat week Thursday was the day we set out on our event and we were blessed with a great farewell from other school students and parents. Thursday we cycled 76km and arrived in Denmark at 3:00pm, where we set up camp at the Rivermouth Caravan Park, who had kindly donated the accommodation.

Day 2 was a spectacular ride along the coast to Greens Pool, a well known swimming and tourist location before cycling back to camp. Tired and a bit sore we were happy for the 2 days cycling, a great achievement indeed.

The support for this special event for the community was fantastic. We had food and snacks provided from parents, and we also raised just over $5000 dollars. We hope to personally present this to Ronald McDonald House in the coming weeks.

The special event also highlighted the skills the students had learnt in the past years, with good bike skills and a good understanding of gear changing and bike maintenance.

A great job to all. Well done team!