During the Encinitas Country Day jogathon, each student running laps around the grassy field carried a higher purpose, helping to heal little hearts. Through donations and lap pledges, the school’s students raised $36,312 for Gift of Life International, enough for 36 children to receive life saving heart-surgery in countries such as the Dominican Republic and Bolivia.
Now in their 16th year of the partnership, Encinitas Country Day has raised over $630,000 for Gift of Life, saving the lives of 577 children in third world countries.
“The Encinitas Country Day School community has once again shown up on behalf of children in need around the world,” said Rob Raylman, CEO of Gift of Life International. “Year after year we are amazed at the kindness and generosity provided by the ECDS staff, students and their families. Hundreds of children are given a healthy life thanks to this tremendous showing of humanity and caring. Words cannot express our appreciation.”
Delayed a couple weeks by the rain, on March 28 each class took their turn running their hearts out on the path around the soccer field while music played. Some classes wore matching t-shirts as parents and staff tracked their laps, disposed high fives and cheered them on.
Through the jogathon, the student developed a connection with the kids whose lives they are saving, a sense of empathy and accomplishment.
Former school parents Shannon Everett and Joty Vallandingham started the jogathon in 2009 and have remained involved every year even without kids in the school. Gift of Live International was always the beneficiary from the very beginning.
According to Gift of Life, 1.3 million children are born every year with a congenital heart defect and of those children, 93% are born in a country that is unable to provide them with treatment.
Starting in 1975, the Rotarian-based Gift of Life used to fly patients to the United States for life-saving heart surgeries, one child at a time. After healing their 10-thousandth child in 2009, their strategy shifted to developing sustainable pediatric cardiac programs in other countries, increasing the number of children they were able to treat and save. They have now established core programs in Uganda and El Salvador and over the last 50 years have helped more than 51,500 children from 80 countries worldwide.
Everett’s father, the actor Chad Everett (from the TV show “Medical Center”), was a national spokesperson for Gift of Life for 25 years. With her mother Shelby Grant, her parents personally sponsored more than 20 heart surgeries for children.
She’s been without them both for several years but they were able to see the jogathon in the beginning years, and now she continues their honor. “For me, it’s now a part of my family’s legacy,”
One year for Christmas, she and her husband sponsored a child from the Dominican Republic, bringing her out to the U.S. for the surgery. Seeing firsthand the transformation from a sick little child to a smiling, healthy girl was an amazing experience.
They wanted to do it again but it was a big expense. Her friend Vallandingham had the idea for a jogathon and getting the whole school involved in helping to save a life.
That first year the jogathon paid for three children’s surgeries, and every year it just continued to grow and grow.
Inside the school library, frames now stretch across the walls from every year of the jogathon, showing all the smiles of kids whose lives they have saved. Little hearts from places like Egypt, Kosovo, Sri Lanka, Uganda, Bolivia, Jamaica, Haiti, Romania and more, all helped by the big hearts from a little school in Encinitas.
“It’s just so much more than we hoped for,” Everett said, as she looked across the faces on the library walls. “The students and families have really embraced it.”
To learn more about Gift of Life International, visit giftoflifeinternational.org
