I decided to kick scooter 7km to two of my best friends' houses to deliver treats on Canada Day and I realized I could turn my mode of transportation into a fundraising project. I wasn't allowed to take public transportation because my family and I agreed it made me vulnerable to too many variables that could be detrimental to the health of senior residents at my job (since I worked at a Retirement Residence at the time). I came to the realization that people do walk-a-thons all the time to raise money and awareness to a cause so why don't I put my scootering to a good cause?

In November, I received an email from a UK athleticwear company that had seen my instagram account and liked the way I formatted my account so much that they reached out to me. They proposed a sponsored collaboration in which I would receive free leggings (but pay the shipping) from their company to promote on my account which in turn would allow me to get discounts on their clothing if I chose to buy anything from them. Unfortunately, as I was in Canada and they were in the UK, the shipping would cost too much, so I had to turn them down.

Shaun, founder of Scoot Pro Vic (a mobile trick scooter shop) reached out to me over Instagram after his brother in-law based in Esquimalt, had seen my project posted on the Esquimalt Community Page. He was interested in my project and provided me with a new scooter and helmet for my trip! I can confidently say that I was still very much processing his generosity well after the meeting. It's times like these that made me realize that there is so much more to my project than just a fundraising and spreading awareness. It involves connecting with others in my community and working together to reach a common goal, a better world and better future!

Due to a delay in the launching of the project's fundraising page, I had to re-launch my initiative and regain the "hype" for the project. This required me to re-format my Instagram account and create more informed, and professional looking posts. I also decided to take a different approach to gain awareness, by making the posts informative yet easy to consume. I also had decided to post daily to keep the interest in my project.

To gain followers, I also had to re-think my approach and began contacting other social justice accounts to post about my project on their account. That way a wider audience could be reached aside from people only I knew.

During the summer time I had been scootering a lot, to and from work, and pretty much anywhere I needed to go. I had also been very active in running and ran 10km at least twice a week. However, when the fall and winter seasons began, school pre-occupied me and the cold weather made it difficult to motivate myself to go out and run. With my trip fast approaching I realized it would be near impossible to scooter 100km without training beforehand. So, I picked my running shoes back out of the closet and forced myself to head out into the cold and start running 3km at least twice a week again. Luckily, I had friends who were more than willing to accompany me so training was less dreary in early mornings.

I had begun reaching out to social justice and youth activism accounts on Instagram to ask them to help market my project. Among one of these accounts which I had reached out to, was Operation Youth. A free online platform that offered tutoring and essential services for youth seeking opportunities to build a better future for themselves and others around them. They were interested in my project and wanted to help further than just re-posting one of my posts on their story. So together we collaborated to hold a child labour awareness week, leading up to my event to not only market my event but raise awareness about this global issue too.

I contacted various news groups about a month prior to my 100km trip, however due to school and other extra-curricular activities I became busy and my project fell off of my priority list. A week or so prior to my trip (during spring break), I finally had the time to recontact the news outlets (as I had not received any responses). To my surprise a reporter from Times Colonist reached out to my and mentioned that they were interested in doing an article about my project.

https://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/high-school-student-to-raise-awareness-of-child-labour-with-100-km-scooter-ride-1.24298959

I had contacted CTV about a month prior to my project then contacted them again a week prior. Unfortunately I had been sending emails to the wrong email addresses (as I had later realized thanks to my friend Lassah who had connections to CTV as her uncle was a news anchor for them). I was given the proper email addresses and then the day after I contacted them I was interviewed and filmed for the news that day. My CTV interview was particularly interesting because the camera person/interviewer happened to have connections to Esquimalt High School. They had also scootered alongside me to get a shot of me scootering which I thought was a very creative and unique filming technique. Extra kudos for camera person dedication.

https://vancouverisland.ctvnews.ca/video?binId=1.1777488

My parents had heard about The Zone contest: Zoner of the Week in which people could nominate members of the community who were making a difference and they had the opportunity to be featured on the station. I had nominated myself just to get the word out and ended up being contacted a couple days after I put in the nomination. I did a quick call with Jenny from the Zone to explain my project and how people can help and I will be featured as Zoner of the Week for this coming week of Mar 29th.

https://omny.fm/shows/the-afternoon-zone-with-pol-jenny/zoner-of-the-week-raine

I arrived at the starting point at 10am and warmed up a little. I also did a pre-trip interview with my friend/photographer/videographer. I travelled the loop twice on the first day to get the initial 40km out of the way. My trip took place from 10:30am-2:30pm. It was not super eventful, although I did see my family at the Nest Cafe (aka the halfway point) upon my second travelling of the loop. I was surprised how smooth the trip had went despite me scootering 20km back to back as I had never trained for that before. Prior to my big 4 day trip I had only scootered at max of 20km once a week.

I was interviewed by CTV at 10:30am and was accompanied by my friends Lassah, Katja and Kiran to the Galloping Goose. There we were met again with the cameraperson for CTV who recorded a few clips of us. Then we were officially off on our way. We met up with another friend at Nest Cafe (the halfway point). Katja was able to take many cool shots such as one of the photos shown in the carousel to the right (the one were we are standing by the crosswalk). I only tackled 20km today but it scooted by so quickly with my friends around and with the bopping playlist I started and which people added to. I then had a live-stream with Katja to update people on the occurrences of the day and then I had a call with someone from The Zone. My friend Lassah had also updated me on the state of my fundraising page as it had begun to gain attention.

I started at 10:30am, scootered a distance of 20km and ended up finishing closer to 1pm. It was the first day of my 100km trip that the weather had been dreary. On this day I had begun to feel the tiredness setting in. For the first 10km I had been maintaining a reasonably fast pace (despite having to go up hills a little tired), but the last 10km I had to travel, I had felt distinctly slower. Despite the dreary weather and being a little tired, I did it! I was accompanied by a couple friends and my friend Orielle had met us again at Nest Cafe (the halfway point).

I started at 10:30am for the final day. To my dismay it had been pouring and for the first time in this four day trip I had to put on rain pants and a rain coat. (Although despite the rain gear, I was still soaked to the bone afterwards.) In any case, I stuck through the rain. The paths had been slightly more slippery (especially the wooden bridge parts). Katja and I met Orielle at Nest Cafe again and were thankfully able to get a seat inside since it had still been down pouring. To my surprise the staff at the Nest Cafe recognized who I was and I was offered a free apple cake which I gratefully accepted. Immediately after Katja and I had left Nest Cafe the wind had picked up and so had the rain and it was so cold that my body kind of numbed up. Most distinctly my left foot became numb and I was so cold I had stopped noticing my soreness so that was both a blessing and curse. After reaching the official 100km mark we jumped around for joy then changed out of our wet clothes and headed to Miche's Cafe to have a celebratory lunch with Lassah.

I must admit that during the week leading up to my official event I had doubts about whether or not anyone would actually end up donating. I had this fear that the fundraising page would stay at zero dollars forever and I really didn't want to face the humiliation of having put in effort just to get "nothing" out of it. Despite it all, I poured my all into the project and tried to do as much as I could as one kid, with not a lot of free time. Finally, at the end I checked my fundraising page and the page did not in fact rest at zero dollars and I ended up successfully raising four hundred and fifty-five US dollars!

Throughout the process of reflecting on my project I ultimately came to the conclusion that this wasn't just a fundraising project. It was an awareness raising project. It taught me the professionalism with representing an organization and sharing their values with a greater audience. It taught me about my own limits, capabilities and strengths. It was a journey, the whole project. When it came down to the actual travelling, I found that it was more of the journey to get to that point that was harder than the actual scootering. It was the interviewing, the corresponding, the promoting, the research, the conversations, thinking and waiting and hoping it would all turn out alright that was more difficult than scootering 100km. When it came down to the scootering, despite the hills, the wind and the rain, I had a blast and I didn't regret a single second of it.