Thanks to YOU, Night of Hope 2024 set a new bar for success
By Laura Hammer,
President, Westerville Education Challenge —
What a great Night of Hope 2024! Our third annual Westerville Education Challenge event to raise mental health awareness in the community was a tremendous success Saturday, Aug. 24!
We pushed well past our goal of hitting 200 participants in the Night of Hope 5K, 1-mile, and Family Fun Run, registering 230 walkers and runners!
Funds raised
Proceeds from the Night of Hope help support WEC’s social-emotional learning initiatives in the Westerville City School District.
We work to create school cultures where every student feels safe, supported and celebrated, with programs like Hope Squad, Parent Prep, the W.E.B. program in our middle schools, the new Link Crew mentorship program at the high schools, and sponsorship of Twinkle, our Canine Companion support dog trained to provide emotional support for Westerville students.
So many ‘thank you’s’
We owe so many thank you’s to our friends, partners and volunteers who worked to make our Night of Hope 2024 the best yet:
- Thank you to all our joyful walkers and runners who showed up at Westerville North’s Jim McCann Stadium Saturday evening to participate!
- Thank you to our wonderful Hope Squad members from Westerville Central, North and South, who again served to cheer on our participants as they made their way through the cross-country course at North, and decorated our luminaria placed around the McCann Stadium track to “shine a light on mental health for all.”
- Thank you to our great partners, who manned booths and provided great mental health resource information for the crowd – to Concord Counseling of Westerville, Ellie Mental Health, the Grief Recovery Method, NAMI Mid-Ohio, and the Westerville Public Library.
- Thank you to our great vendor sponsors: Jet’s Pizza, which provided free pizza for our volunteers and the participants, and Kona Ice.
- And thank you to our wonderful corporate sponsors who provided generous donations: Ace Handyman Services, Baker’s Acres Greenhouse, Blair IT, Coldwell Banker Realty-Mary Campbell Staebler, Cutler/Maize & Co. Real Estate, The Draft Room, The David Grant State Farm Insurance Agency, HealthWorx, Jet’s Pizza, Meyer Media LLC, Salaita Orthodontics, Stolly Insurance Group, and The Robert Weiler Company,
Food drive fun
A new collaboration with two great community organizations – the Rotary Club of Westerville and The Big Bus – bore real fruit at our 2024 Night of Hope: 705 pounds of food was donated to stock the pantries at Westerville’s four middle schools.
The “Fill the Big Bus Middle School Food Drive” was a great addition to this year’s Night of Hope, with Rotarians and Big Bus board members loading the donated items into the Big Bus, then divvying it up to go to the schools. Thank you, Rotary and thank you, Big Bus, for joining in our event.
And a big, final THANK YOU to the whole Westerville Community, for supporting WEC and our Night of Hope 2024!
PHOTOS courtesy of Charlie Boss/Westerville City School District
