And you can aid: Sophie Sharp is keeping a 5K Pleasurable Operate on May 1 benefitting the Rwanda Girls Initiative.
BELLEVUE, Clean. — Sophie Sharp isn’t your ordinary high school senior. She’s elevated extra than $85,000 to guidance young ladies in Rwanda.
Though the state is more than 8,000 miles absent, Sharp is pushed to assistance fund a transform via the Rwanda Ladies Initiative. She found out the corporation via a spouse and children journey to Rwanda in 2017.
The Bellevue-primarily based group is devoted to furnishing a world-course secondary instruction for women in Rwanda and empowering them in a boarding school atmosphere. It was started in 2008 by Shalisan Foster and Suzanne Sinegal McGill, with the eyesight of providing instruction to whom it is not quickly accessible.
In 2009, they opened the Gashora Women Academy of Science and Technological know-how.
Sharp was struck by the many challenges dealing with women her age in Africa including accessibility to education and early marriage. In Rwanda, only 16% of women are able to complete secondary faculty.
“It’s seriously unhappy mainly because only 2% of those people ladies go on to university while 94% from Gashora Academy go on to college or university,” she explained.
Sharp stated she is compelled to aid the university mission and is leaning on her enthusiasm for running to fundraise.
“I run monitor for Bellevue Superior Faculty and Cross Place for Overlake in Redmond so I like operating and it’s a wonderful way to get folks out of the property to support a community group that’s shifting life across the planet,” stated Sharp.
She champions the Rwanda Girls Initiative logo and slogan: “Educate a female. Inspire a Neighborhood. Rework a Country!”
This year marks the fourth yearly “RGI 5k Pleasurable Run” that Sharp has structured. She’s quite energized to be back in particular person immediately after a virtual run past year.
“We continue to raised $30,000 in a digital structure so I’m extremely delighted about that and this year we are getting to be alongside one another once again in human being so we are aiming to push our full more than $120,000,” she said.
Sharp reported the function has a family feel and there will be food stuff, music, and entertaining for the “mostly flat route for the reason that it stretches throughout some of the 520 floating bridge and back again.”
The 2022 RGI 5k Enjoyable Run is Sunday, May perhaps 1. Registration is readily available for walkers and runners.