Mountain bikers to raise funds for orphanage
In dark times, there are more reasons than ever not to exercise.
For those of us not blessed with an innate drive to physical betterment, motivation is a scarce commodity. We husband our feeble powers, but they dwindle and we weaken. We can’t go on; we go on.
Downcast in our private trials, we raise our eyes to a sea of troubles, and hopeful signs are fleeting.
But what if we were to take a middle view? What if, stepping outside our circle but not losing our spirit in the world’s sorrows, we found ourselves in another circle, made up of the hopeful faces of 26 children? What if we could build on their hope, find in them a reason to strive, a synergy of souls, a motive force for raising up our own bodies and spirits, as well as the lives of our fellow Negrenses?
What if “what if?” was “Yes, we can!”?
Guess what? It is!
In this spirit, the Bata ng Calabnugan (BnC) orphanage cordially invites you to join the Bike-for-a-Cause local bike tour on Saturday, March 5.
A hundred percent of the proceeds from the event will go to the food budget of the BnC orphanage, a home for at-risk girls from all over Region VII (Central Visayas).
If you are not up to this moderately-challenging local bike tour (if the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak), there are many other ways to show your support, and all are most welcomed, needed, and appreciated.
BnC is a special place. Founded in 2005 by Calabnuganon Flora Aguit and her Italian husband Francesco Izzo, the orphanage provides an environment as close as possible to a family home.
Flora and Frans act as surrogate parents for some 20 to 30 children, ranging in age from infants through 18 years old.
They take all their meals together, they care for each other, the older girls help care for the younger children, they attend the Holy Cross School. Physical exercise and enrichment activities (trekking, and especially biking, but also juggling, balancing, and creative arts & crafts) are strongly emphasized.
BnC is the only licensed and accredited home for infants on the island of Negros. All the children are referred to BnC by local government units throughout Central Visayas.
BnC’s funding comes almost entirely from the private sector, about 80 percent of which come from Italy (collected under the auspices of BnC’s affiliated Italian NGO called Isla ng Bata), and 20 percent from private citizens and organizations in the Philippines.
Even before the pandemic, which hit Italy very hard, the continuing financial crisis in southern Europe was making fund-raising extremely difficult; and now funds for BnC’s basic needs are running dangerously low.
Each year, Frans and Flora travel to Italy over the Christmas and Easter season to do in-person fund-raising there. In recent years, they found bike touring to be quite effective.
In 2019, the couple did a tour from the heel of Italy’s boot all the way to the top of the socks in the foothills of the Alps, stopping at towns along the way to carbo-load at fund-raising dinners, which were quite successful.
This short Negros bike tour is actually the opening salvo for an even more ambitious European bike tour (called ‘Go Isla Go’) that is planned for April and May of this year, with Frans riding from Southern Greece all the way to Northern Europe. (Stay tuned to this space for more details.)
Frans trains here by biking up and down the local hills and mountains with his BnC children who, of course, are brimming with excess energy under the extended “house arrest” imposed by the pandemic.
The Bike-for-a-Cause tour will start and end at the orphanage at barangay Calabnugan, and will go through barangays Pansil and San Antonio in Sibulan, and barangay Balili in Valencia.
The course is only moderately-difficult, involving a rise of some 314 meters.
Registration fee for each biker is P500.
For those who can’t manage the cycling, support of any kind will be joyously welcomed. Details of the bike tour are in a poster designed by Ryan Uy of Lee Plaza, primary organizer of this event.
You can also contact directly Bata ng Calabnugan Home for Girls at 0915-392- 5107 or 0916-754-3528 or email [email protected] or facebook.com/bata.ng.calabnugan
BPI Dumaguete Main
SWIFT Code: BOPIPHMM
Account Name: Bata ng Calabnugan Inc.
Account No. 1083-4725-76
What if “what if” was “yes,” OK? OK good, see you there then! (Simon Stack/[email protected])
