A new youth mental health campaign will see students from local high schools take part in a 283-kilometre duathlon later this year to raise money and awareness for the Algoma Family Services Foundation.
Sault Ste. Marie Police Service Cnst. Sonny Spina - who also serves as chair of the board of directors for the foundation - was on hand at The Machine Shop Thursday to officially launch the campaign known as DU283 - a nod to Spina’s badge number, 283.
“This is much more for us about engagement with our community, and being able to tell these kids what resources are out there for them, so they can seek help if they need it,” Spina told reporters at the launch.
The DU283 campaign is the result of a partnership between Spina and RAM Fitness & Cycling Studio.
Spina says the idea to do a duathlon - which sees participants run a leg, then cycle, then run another leg - was thrown around during a 100-kilometre cycling trip he went on with RAM Fitness & Cycling Studio owner Ryan Mitchell this past summer.
“We kind of planned a lot of it together right then,” said Spina. “We started talking about how we can connect the two together - the Algoma Family Services Foundation and RAM cycling and fitness and how we could make this actually happen.”
“We thought it was a great way to show that we’re here to support people, and we’re here to engage with people.”
A series of duathlons involving Spina’s team - comprised of himself and seven members of the community - and students from 10 local high schools will take place throughout the months of May and June, leading up to a sanctioned duathlon on June 23.
Spina told reporters that people who best Spina’s team will receive a ‘challenge coin’ as a token of their achievement.
“If they do beat us, they each earn one of these coins, and the idea being that they will always stay connected to the event,” he said. “If 10 years down the road they talk about competing in these duathlons and winning, and they have these coins to bring them back to this foundation and to the idea of mental health, that’s a win for us - we want to keep that conversation going.”
Algoma Family Services CEO Ali Juma told reporters that the foundation is critical to sustaining its operations.
The agency, he says, has been dealing with a 20 per cent increase in demand for services over the past five years, and the shortfall in government funding is made up for, in part, by the Algoma Family Services Foundation.
Money raised by the foundation allows Algoma Family Services to do psychological assessments, provide more groups for children, and implement more programs that allow for quicker access to service.
Juma points to the Creating Connections program, which is a group for children who have experienced or witnessed domestic violence.
Currently, 67 young people are on the wait list for that program.
“The foundation funding allows us to provide more of those groups,” Juma told reporters during the DU283 launch. “The demand continues to increase for us, and the capacity to meet that demand is always challenging.”
More information will eventually become available on the DU283 website.