KICK-A-THON


Make a donation to A Woman's Place

Click here for 2008 Kickathon Picture Album
Click here for 2007 Kickathon Picture Album

On April 26th, at the Chalfont Studio, we held a Kick-a-thon with our students each doing 500 kicks to raise money for a worthy charity: A Womans Place (Click here for info about AWP http://www.awomansplace.org/ )   AWP is a domestic violence agency, the only one of its kind in our county, and they provide free, private and confidential services and assistance to victims of domestic abuse and violence.
 
When we first started the process of planning for this event, over 6 months ago, I was hoping it would raise $2500-$3000 for the charity we chose.
 
Leon Psculkowski came to me with A Woman's Place as a good charity to help support, and after some gathering of information and a meeting with one of their representatives, we decided it would be great to work hard to help them out.
 
Last year we ended up with about 35-40 kickers, and we raised around $2200. I figured we could raise more since it was such a good cause, but there are so many factors, I didn't want to promise TOO much, but I felt $3000 would certainly be within reach.
 
Once we started to get things moving, I was surprised by the amount of people who knew of or even worked with A Woman's Place. Some through their church or other groups, some personally, but everyone who knew about it felt it was a worthy cause.
 
As I started writing the names of students who had raised $40 or more on the mirror, and saw that at the absolute minimum we would raise over $4000, I was very happy for the support.
 
As students started to hand in their donations, the week before and the day of the tournament, I realized we would be pretty close to $5000 raised.
 

After factoring in the donations I received from some long lost friends who had gotten an e-mail from me, and the donations we received from some of the Self Defense classes I had run in the months leading up to the kickathon, and including a significant day-of-the-event donation from one family, I totaled it all up and was both surprised and very happy that we had actually raised over $6000.

 
I'm pretty sure that the representives of AWP were pleasantly surprised, that a local karate school would raise over $6000 for their organization must have come out of left field for them.
 
We had a total of about 60 kickers, including many who could not attend the event on that day, but chose to do their kicks before or after their regular class the week before or after the kickathon. (And as a nice side note here, almost all of them came to me and asked to do them, rather than trying to get around it by pretending to forget.)
 
To the Leadership Program students and all the other students who helped out in so many ways, thank you. These kind of events rely on SO many hands helping out, and there was SO much to do, yet it was done quickly, efficiently, and without complaining.
 
Special thanks to the Coxhead family, Macnamara family, Findlay family, Stumpf family, Darrows family, Joyce family, The Psculkowski family, The Stark family and The Gordon family for their donations of time, effort and money raised.
 

Thank you to everyone who made this such a great event, and hopefully, when we do this again next year, we can continue to grow and do even better!


 

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Villari's Shaolin Kempo Karate of Southeastern Pennslyvania
New Britain Village Square, 4275 County Line Road, New Britain, PA 18914
Phone: 215.997.2222 E-mail: villarispa@aol.com