Above: For the fourth time, Penelope Hauck will use her running shoes on Patriots Day to earn money for a worthy cause. (Images from fundraising page)
Southborough has always had an impressive showing at the Boston Marathon, and this year is no exception.
On Monday, April 20, nineteen Southborough residents will don a bib a run to run. Many will be raising funds for important causes in the process.
Every runner has a story, and from now until marathon day, I’ll feature as many as I can.
[If you’re running the Boston Marathon and would like to have your story featured, drop me a line at mysouthborough@gmail.com]
Today’s feature focuses on Penelope Hauck. Hauck is raising funds this year for the ALLY Foundation.
It’s Hauck’s 4th Boston Marathon. Back in 2007, she raised funds for the MSPCC (Mass Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children). For the past two years, she supported UAspire to help inner city kids pay for college. Over the course of four “Boston’s” she estimates having raised over $28,000 for charity.
The cause she’s supporting this year is an effort to end sexual violence:
The ALLY Foundation’s mission is to be a transformative and innovative force to end sexual violence by advancing evidence-based research, best practices, education, prevention and awareness to significantly improve lives. The vision of the ALLY Foundation is to be recognized as the sexual violence organization of choice in the United States by working to end sexual violence by educating the public and advocating for necessary changes in culture where information creates more intelligently safe communities and policies help the public and private sector improve the well being of individuals, children and families. . .
So, where does my money go?
Since the start of the ALLY Foundation, they have worked to pass a pivotal law known as The Sexually Dangerous Person Law. Simply said, it provides confinement for prisoners who have completed their sentences, yet are too dangerous to release to the community. It has been very successfully implemented and would have saved ALLY’s life.
The foundation co-founded a national Sex Offender Management Collaborative to facilitate the exchange of current information among jurisdictions in all 50 states for law enforcement, treatment providers, legislators and researchers which has been very successful.
Right now though, there is no “central library”…no single location housing all the research and best practices relevant to sexual violence. The foundation needs to raise $300,000 to open the doors to such an institute and they are currently working with RAND Corporation. As we know, this is a toxic topic and most people don’t want to support it. Frankly, it is difficult to develop an affinity for sexual violence…people believe that it will never touch them.
Your donation goes to help the mission of ALLY and to prevent something like this happening again. (read more)
To pledge your support, click here. To learn more about the ALLY Foundation click here.
Have a great run tomorrow.
Good luck to Kirsten Karis and all the runners.
The Kacevich Family