Shining Light On The Dark - Suicide Awareness and Prevention - Godzone Adventure Race

$5,315 of $5,250 goal

Given by 80 generous donors in 8 weeks

Why? Why Not?! We have personally experienced the grief of suicide and have seen the effect of it on our communities. Enough is enough.

West Coast

Up to 7 days, over 500km distance, over 8,000m elevation, at least 5 disciplines, what a challenge, what a cause

Sparked out of the grief and questions that follow dealing with the loss associated with suicide when it strikes to close to home, Shining Light On The Dark started in 2017 following the lose of one of the team from the Kiwi Rugby Club based out of Hokitika. Many rugby clubs, workplaces and families/whanau have also been struck by this throughout the West Coast, New Zealand and the rest of the world.

The West Coast leads many unique statistics including having the most land under DoC management for a region at 87%, but sadly in the suicide space we also lead not only New Zealand with per capita losses to suicide but as New Zealand leads the OECD we are the world leaders, something no one will be proud of and many wont be aware of.

We aim to enable our community to support each other by upskilling via training in this space both for identifying troubles and also for supporting those left behind after a suicide, by educating via guest speakers that captivate an audience and draw people into this topic like Mike King and John Kirwan, running events to get people out in the fresh air, active and enjoying other peoples company and entertainment. We also work with local musicians and videographers to create songs and content to spread our message/kaupapa.

Our most recent addition is finding other avenues to activate our message and get the people thinking and talking about this. Godzone Adventure Race is the first of these and the current campaign we are running, our founder Ashley Cassin and three team mates Genevieve Leech, Alistair Boyce and David Bennison are on the start line in March and doing battle for this cause.

Any donation is welcomed with open arms and comes with a whole hearted gratitude.

Please help us with Shining Light On The Dark

Use of funds

To empower the local communities we operate in to support one another and to spread our message to other communities as to assist them with their battles in this space.

Our main focus is local events, training sessions with experts and guest speakers.

Other page links

And the week long race is over... 20 March 2019

We have finished the race and achieved far more than we set out too, with 80% of fundraising targets meet and a second place finish in our race delivering us some very sweet cherries on top.

A massive thank you to our 59 donors to date.

The page remains lives until the end of March and we hope to hit 100% of our target

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