Thanks to Martin and Sue Parnell and the community, the Lindsay Kimmett Kindergarten in Mto wa Mbu, Tanzania, Africa, will be getting a playground.
They held the 6th annual Martin Parnell Walk/Run on Dec. 31, 2015, at the Spray Lake Sawmills Family Sports Centre to raise $10,000 to build the Sue and Martin Parnell playground for the new school and to purchase it a bouncy castle as well.
According to Martin, they had “around 120 participants with more milling around” the tables they had set up, which is an increase from previous years.
In the past, the proceeds from the event have gone towards Parnell’s “Quests for Kids” initiative, which wrapped up in 2014 with him raising a total of $1.3 million and helping 27,340 kids.
After receiving numerous requests from past participants for him to continue running the event, he decided to approach Lau and Leesha Mafuru, directors of Boma Africa, a non-profit tour company that undertook the building of the school.
Together they formed a partnership to supply the playground.
This was a special event for Parnell as it was his first marathon after discovering he had a large blood clot in his brain in February of 2015.
He was fortunate enough to have found it in time, saving his life.
“This would have been my first year not running a marathon since 2003,” said Parnell.
After receiving the news that treatment had shrunk the clot significantly, he was cleared by his doctors to take part in the event.
“It was tough – but I had people going along beside me giving me inspirational quotes.”
His personal goal was to finish the marathon within six hours and he met that by finishing at five hours, 16 minutes and one second.
Parnell exceeded his fundraising goal for the event as well.
“We raised $4,790 on the day of the event, which brought our total to $12,066,” said Parnell, who had already raised $5,720 before the walk/run thanks in large part to the Rotary Club of Cochrane and Downunder Travel Ltd.
The playground is currently under construction, thanks to Lau, and is set to be completed by the end of January.
Within the week, Lau will also be heading to Nairobi, Kenya, Africa, to purchase the bouncy castle.
Parnell will be using the money left over from the fundraiser to buy books for the kindergarten class.
With the event a huge success, Parnell would like to wish a big thank you to Robin Mitchell, the general manager at Spray Lake Sawmills Family Sports Centre, and his team for all their help.
He will also be holding another fundraiser, called Books are the Playground of the Mind, on Jan. 15 at Indigo Signal Hill in Calgary.
Ten per cent of all sales between 6:30 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. will go towards purchasing school books for the students at the Lindsay Kimmett Kindergarten.
Parnell and two other authors will be at the store that evening holding book signings.
Currently he is unsure if he will be hosting the Martin Parnell Walk/Run event in 2016.
“We’ll see about holding it next year – if a need arises, local or not, we might do it again, it just depends.”
