24 Hour Race

On Saturday, 19th of November a team of 7 CIMP students ran the 24 hour race supported by SUKA Society. It was held at IGB International School in Sungai Buloh. Buona Vista's team leader, Nicholas Yap, helped to lead the team to the end. Other members included, Swarna Selvaraja, Luqmaan Khan, Joshua Alfred Myat, Marian Yeow, Vaibhav Malu and Pua Yen Li. Prior to the race, the team had to raise a total of RM 2000 as donation funds to the 24 Hour Race group in order to register and all money raised and collected would go to stopping human trafficking and slavery and raising awareness for the cause. The first fundraiser held was a water balloon event. Selected CIMP teachers would be voted in by students who had to pay to keep their teacher on the leaderboard. The top 5 teachers were to be struck with a water ballooned on the day of the event, with each bucket filled with water balloons sold at an auctioned price to the highest bidders. The event raised a considerable amount of money for the team and was largely successful due to the cooperation and support received by the teachers for volunteering and students for voting. Our second event, was an open mic held at W_are_house, a small cute cafe in USJ dedicated for open mic events. We had invited several feature artists and other CIMP performers to sing and showcase their talents! A good turnout of a crowd made the event a successful one and definitely memorable for the audience. Lastly, our third and final fundraiser was a bake sale. Each team member brought baked goods and it was sold at very reasonable prices for very delicious goods! In total, we managed to raise RM 2050 on the dot!

On the day of the event, each member ran as many laps as they could and it was certainly a challenge with the blazing sun above us. Each lap was approximately a distance of 900 metres and was located on the IGB track and field. Tents for teams were provided and food for 3 meals was given as part of the registration fees. The event held a total of 110 teams from all over schools in Malaysia. It was an estimated of 1000 runners and all there for the benevolent cause!

During the night, each member would take shifts of half an hour to an hour whilst the others slept and we rotated the shifts equally so every runner ran around the same number of laps. Our best runner, Marian Yeow had run an estimate of 50 laps all on her own by the end of the race. By the end of the race, each member was sleep deprived, sore and beyond exhaustion but we felt accomplished because, this was the most challenging thing we had ever done. Our team worked very well together and we had no issues in splitting the efforts we all put in prior to and during the race.

Certificates, gift bags and prizes were given to teams and miraculously, our team ran a total of 220 laps in the 24 hours continuously and were placed 28th out of 110 teams! It was a pleasant surprise and made the pain, struggle and exhaustion all worth it in the end. We hope that the race continues on and helps end the enormous numbers of people trafficked around the world and forced into slavery.

The race would not have been possible without the support and encouragement of the CIMP management team, CIMP Student council for giving up their time and effort to aid us in our fundraisers and to the teachers who came to watch and motivated us to keep going during the race.