Prison walk-a-thon raises $20,000

BOWDEN - For the fourth year in a row hundreds of Bowden Institution inmates have been making a positive difference.

They have chosen to “to reach out beyond the fence” by walking hundreds and hundreds of miles in the prison yard. And when their walk-a-thon was over, they had raised more than $20,000 for the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, a partnership of 15 church and church-based agencies whose collective mission is to end global hunger.

“The inmates came up with the idea. They wanted to reach out beyond the fence. That has been their theme for the last four years, reaching beyond the fence,” said Rev. Bud Sargent, the chaplain at the medium security prison.

This year's walk-a-thon has proven there is continued growing success with the event. The first raised $3,600 to support an orphanage in war torn Sri Lanka; the second collected $8,000 to help rebuild a vocational training centre in the typhoon-devastated Philippines, while the third raised $11,000 to help drill water wells in rural villages following the aftermath of the 2015 Nepal earthquake.

This year's fourth annual walk-a-thon was held on Sept. 10 and featured 297 inmates – half the prison's population, and 20 volunteers who walked the half-kilometre circumference of the institution's exercise yard. They completed 3,694 laps around the yard for a total of 1,981 kilometres.

Funds were raised through pledges from families and friends of the inmates, as well as from prison chapel volunteers and area churches. As well, citizens from across Canada donated through a foodgrains bank website page - Friend-to-Friend Bowden walk-a-thon – that was created for the event.

The more than $20,000 raised, which is being matched four to one by the federal government, has been targeted for a World Renew ministry project in the Dugda region of Ethiopia. The money will help feed 41,000 people in need.

“The story here is that inmates are aware of the plight of others in the world less fortunate then themselves, and in their small way they are trying to reach out beyond the fence to help people in need,” said Sargent.

“Many inmates' lives have been changed from selfishness since being incarcerated to caring about others - by and by shifting the public's perspective of the stereotypical view of an inmate.”