A colour fun run hosted by Bow Valley High School (BVHS) Leadership students on May 11th was another great success.

This was the second annual 'Time For Hope Colours Cochrane Run,' and while runners may have been down slightly, the organizing committee did a great job and was thrilled with the results.

Grace Harvey, one of four CZARs (leaders of the committee), shares they had roughly 130 people run in support of raising awareness for women/mom's mental health and pregnancy, and close to 60 volunteers show up the day of. "I think the race really exceeded all of our expectations. We had so much wonderful support from those who were there and they cared so much about our cause. Everyone participated to their fullest extent, and we had everyone from moms, dads, families, to just people who wanted to come out and have fun. It was just an amazing experience because everyone who came out seemed like they were really into the event and we are so appreciative of all that amazing support."

Late last week, the committee debriefed the event and discussed why participation was down slightly. "We had a huge change in administration at our school and teacher population; so this year our Leadership teachers are completely different than the two that helped us last year; since they hadn't seen the event before we kind of had to start at square one again. I think we did pretty well for starting from scratch all over again."

Trying to make the event as stress-free as possible, Harvey shares making the coloured powder that volunteers tossed for the event a little further out next year, as well as reaching out to more sponsors and advertisers is what the group is taking forward. "We had a huge change in the kind of sponsorships we had this year versus last year and maybe that is something we should look at earlier into the next year as well. But I think that now that we have this hands-on experience with our leadership crew and teachers that we are going to be way better prepared next year for it."

This year the Cochrane Pregnancy Care Centre was chosen as the charity of choice, and Harvey says the run raised just over 1,000 dollars. "We are just tying up all our odds and ends. We covered all of our costs and we ended up with a profit over a grand I believe."

Keep an eye out next year when BVHS students host the next Time For Hope Colours Cochrane Fun Run.