Pedals for Hope

If you are someone who reads my blog regularly (there's about six of you), then you might remember that I write about Pedals for Hope every year in May.  Pedals for Hope is one of my very favorite things about Entheos Academy—I find it very exciting.  But after last year's ride, I heard a nasty rumor that they may not do it again. And, truthfully, last year's assembly fell a little flat, and I never did find out how much money the kids raised.  I wonder if the problem is that it has become more a school project, rather than a student project. I think it would be very sad if they dropped this activity, and I believe that the excitement could be revived if they wanted to do it.  But what do you think it would take to bring back their enthusiasm?

Well, anyway, I wrote this paper for my English class last summer, and I've been meaning to post it here, since I never did write about last year's ride.  This is kind of a cumulation of my past years' Pedals for Hope writings, along with interviews of some of the people who got it going to begin with.  I hope you enjoy it. :-)

PEDALS FOR HOPE

Pedals for Hope assembly 2010
Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News

The air of Entheos academy is thick with anticipation and an eager buzz comes from the classrooms. In the large common room a few teachers wait, setting up chairs and making last-minute arrangements for the upcoming ceremony.  Soon children, teachers, and parents fill the room; the teachers are hard-pressed to keep their students quiet in this atmosphere of palpable excitement. When the main student body is seated, one teacher and twenty-three students, ranging from kindergarteners to ninth-graders, boldly march across the room and take their seats in front of the eagerly waiting crowd, where a man and a woman stand, their hands poised to slash with clean, sharp blades.  They are all about to witness human sacrifice.

Working quickly, the man and woman cut ten-inch ponytails from each girl's head; they shave the heads of three boys who have been growing their hair for a year in preparation for this day.  As they reach forward to cut the teacher's hair, an aide is in tears, "I can't believe Ms. Tere is cutting her beautiful hair—I love her hair!"  With each snip, with each shorn head, with each tail that is held high to the crowd's view, the room explodes with shrieking, chanting and cheering.

It is not a pagan ritual.  It is not an Entheos rite of passage.  It is the celebration of their annual cancer fundraiser, Pedals for Hope.

Entheos Academy lists Excellence, Service, and Leadership as its first values, and Pedals for Hope is their culminating service project every year.  In the past four years Entheos students have raised over $20,000 for cancer research at the Huntsman Cancer Foundation.  It is even more impressive that this annual fundraiser was spearheaded by sixth-graders and continues to be propelled by the students.

Pedals for Hope was conceived in 2008, when Entheos sixth-graders did an expedition—a two month long, in-depth study—about cancer.  Their teacher, Kathy Millar, had set up a similar program in Michigan, and wanted to encourage her Entheos students to start a cancer fundraiser.  She explains, ". . . even though I had the idea and the structure, part of that structure is giving kids the freedom and opportunity to own it.  I don't think it is possible for me to say, 'This is what we are doing,' and then [expect them to] do it.  Kids wouldn't buy in.  So . . . we started at ground zero and let the kids make the decisions."

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Ms. Millar arranged for field trips to the Huntsman Institute for Cancer where, besides learning about the progression of the disease, the students learned that 550,000 people will die of cancer in a year—literally a person every minute.  Visitors were invited to the school to tell kids of their experiences with cancer.  Lindsey North, an Entheos alumnus and one of those original sixth-graders recalls, "The thing that caught my attention the most was that people said they couldn't believe that it was their family member lying on the bed. It didn't look like the person they knew. 

"It surprised me, and made me want to help."

The more the children learned, the greater compassion they felt for cancer victims and their families.  "We wanted to learn more about how to help," Lindsey said.  "We didn't know how to do it, we just knew we wanted to do it. And our teacher, Kathy Millar—she told us about a place called the Make a Wish Foundation."  Ms. Millar took her students on a field trip to the foundation in Salt Lake City, where they were introduced to the magical fairy-tale room that Make a Wish uses to begin their process of granting one wish to children, up to eighteen years old, who have life-threatening diseases.

After that field trip the Entheos students really started brainstorming ideas to promote cancer awareness.  "We toyed with the idea of selling T-shirts, or bracelets, or necklaces," Lindsey said, "but it didn't seem like something that we could really go very far with.  We heard that other people did runs or bike-rides . . . and so we decided maybe we should do something like that instead.  We came up with the name [Pedals for Hope] because we wanted something to do with bikes, and we wanted to give hope."

That year the sixth grade set a goal to raise $3,000 for the Huntsman Cancer Foundation.

"After we chose [a bike tour] we started looking at, 'How can we get money for this?'  We heard that other groups just went out and found sponsors," Lindsey said.  So with help from their teachers, these eleven and twelve-year-olds began looking for supporters.  Together they composed a letter, which they sent to some local businesses.  Later they called those businesses, and some of the kids even visited them to ask for donations in person.  Kathy Millar recalls, "[The kids] got dressed up and went into town to solicit sponsors—this was their idea and they took it so seriously.  It was beautiful."

Other students spent extra hours after school to make more phone calls.  They followed up with their potential sponsors until the day of the bike ride.  They found a business that would donate T-shirts to Pedals for Hope, and they looked for others who would donate bikes and helmets to use for their tour.

But they had another obstacle to overcome: some of the kids didn't know how to ride bikes.

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So the students made bi-weekly visits to the Salt Lake Bicycle Collective where they learned all about bicycles: what all the parts are called, how they work, how to make minor repairs, bike safety, and the students who didn't know how to ride learned how.  "We took our bikes to school to practice for the bike ride," Lindsey remembers.  "That year only the sixth grade [participated in the bike tour], so it was important that everyone knew how to [ride]."

The students did get discouraged, but at any given time there was a handful of kids who were excited enough to keep the project moving forward.  Lindsey relates, "As we got nearer to the bike ride everybody finally realized that, 'Yes, it's going to go well, and it's something to be proud of.' And everybody's attitude just changed."

The Entheos students planned a two-stage, two-day bike ride, with a campout on the interim night. But the race got rained out, and after a tumultuous night in the tents leaders decided it was too dangerous to continue; they had to go back home.  Ms. Millar said, "Virtually every kid said something to the effect of, 'I feel like we are letting cancer patients down,' or, 'They go through worse times than this.' At that point I knew they got it—it's not about getting out of school or riding the bike; it's about helping. Their empathy was true and their understanding genuine—I was so proud that day!"

Pedals for Hope assembly, 2009

The next day, May 21, 2008, the weather quieted and the Entheos sixth grade finished their tour on the Jordan River Parkway.  They rode their bikes fifteen miles, sporting bright yellow "Pedals for Hope" T-shirts to show their support for cancer research.  Nine girls had heard of Locks of Love, the organization that makes wigs for patients who have lost their hair.  These girls pledged to donate their hair if they reached their $3,000 goal.  They not only reached the goal, but almost doubled it, earning $5,411 that year.

The entire school was so excited by the success of Pedals for Hope that it has become an annual event.  They extended the bike-riding privileges to the whole middle school; now students have the choice of riding from ten to fifty miles, and several parents and teachers ride with them.  Some middle-schoolers who don't want to ride wait at posts along the trail to give small snacks, water, and, most of all, encouragement to their bike heroes.  The rest of the student body participates in the annual Penny Wars—a competition throughout the school to see which grade, K through 9, can collect the most pennies to contribute to the Huntsman Foundation.  The Penny Wars alone have earned more than $1,000 every year, and the Locks of Love donations have become a highlight of Entheos' annual celebration of Pedals for Hope.

"Beautiful things [happened] at Entheos," Ms. Millar remembers.  "[One year] the kindergarten class raised over $400 in our Penny Wars; they wheeled out two monstrous jars filled with pennies to surprise us after a day [of] riding—it was awesome.  I loved the way the whole school came out, built an arch with their hands, and gave the kids high fives as they returned from their riding day.  [The kids] could feel the contributions tangibly.  More important than what I feel about the money the kids raise is the way they feel—I will never forget the day we unrolled that first amount.  The sheer joy and pride on their faces was contagious—students believed in the cause, worked hard, and in the end . . . they felt empowered.  And that is what this is all about—empowering kids to do good."

Pedals for Hope bike ride, 2011

It is a beautiful morning; there's a cool breeze, but the sun shines warm on the Jordan River Parkway.  Forty students in matching T-shirts stand by their bicycles, hands on the handlebars, ready to go.  They are getting instruction and encouragement from their teacher, Matthew Edvik.  "The other night the Huntsman Center held an awards ceremony to honor those who have helped them," he tells his kids.  "Entheos is one of only five organizations who received a special award from them."  And with cheering, high-fives, and high hopes, the bike ride begins.