By Adventure Racing Coromandel
Adventure Racing Coromandel was established at the turn of the 21st Century on the 1st January 2000 and on the 1st January 2010 we celebrated our tenth birthday.
Our first event was the ARC Adventure Race – "Journey into the Unknown" which took place after more than a year of planning in April 2001. It was not only a journey into the unknown for the competitors, it was a journey into the unknown for ourselves and it has been a fantastic journey ever since. Over the past 10 years we have run 39 events in which 14,551 competitors have taken part and it has been a real pleasure putting the events on, getting to know parts of the Peninsula intimately and getting to meet so many good people.
A few months after starting the ARC we established the Spirit of Coromandel Trust. The aim of the trust is to encourage people, particularly youngsters, into the outdoors. Over the past ten years we have sent dozens of youngsters on various outdoor courses including Outward Bound, OPC and Spirit of Adventure.
It has always been our dream to one day establish a small outdoor education centre, staffed and run by professional outdoor education instructors, on the Coromandel Peninsula. This would enable us to send more youngsters and people on outdoor education courses and help give them an appreciation and understanding of the outdoors in this amazing country.
We now feel that we have built up the credibility and experience to make this happen. Thanks to Trust Waikato we have recently carried out a feasibility study which shows that there would be demand for such a centre in this area.
So for the next 5 years we are setting ourselves the target to establish an Outdoor Education Centre on the Peninsula and have it up and running prior to the 1st January 2015. Our target is to raise $2m over the next 5 years to pay for the land and buildings and the first years operating costs.
At this stage we are not entirely sure how it is all going to happen, but we need to make a start. We have just opened a special long term savings account with an initial deposit of $1,000. We are going to need lots of help to make this happen.
We will pay the net proceeds from our events into this account. However this in itself will not be nearly enough and we will need to fundraise and will need other people to help us fundraise.
So if you have any ideas on fundraising, or would like to fundraise on our behalf we would be delighted to hear from you. We are in the process of setting up a special website for the Spirit of Coromandel Trust – www.arcevents.co.nz/sct and on that site we will keep you posted of our progress including a running total of all the funds raised and where those funds have come from.
A Happy New Year to everyone and thanks for all your participation in our events, whether as a competitor, a volunteer, a competitors support person, a landowner, a sponsor or a supplier of services. You have all played a part and will continue to play a key part of our journey.
