Marathoning for Durae's Catholic Youth Seminar

Hi everyone,

 

I'll be running the Brooklyn Marathon this weekend (Sunday, 4/24), and will be dedicating this race to raising funds for an upcoming Catholic Youth Retreat on Memorial Day Weekend called YES (Youth Encountering Spirit). My goal this year is to raise funds to make the retreat as affordable as possible for all participants, which is open this year to both college students and high school students.

 

What's Durae? Durae's a Catholic youth service and worship team, which has been providing ongoing prayer meetings and in-person retreats for parishioners in the New York area. Durae is comprised of parishioners from New York and New Jersey, and has been providing ongoing prayer meetings and retreats since 2015. I personally became involved with Durae in 2020, and currently, we're in the midst of preparing for this Youth Seminar.

 

Why? These past two years of COVID have been incredibly challenging for all parishes in the area, with attendance at churches dropping significantly and faith diminishing in most of our lives. This seminar aims to provide a platform for students to not just grow their faith, but also rediscover their roots in the church which they may have been disconnected from during the pandemic. For myself and for all members of Durae, we serve because we know how much retreats meant for our faith lives growing up. And God-willing, we can provide participants a similar experience with this year's seminar.

 

What's the plan with funds raised? 100% of funds raised will be contributed to subsidizing the cost for registrants of the retreat (not including service team members). For context, the overall cost of renting out the retreat center is about $15,000 for Memorial Day weekend (including food, housing, etc for around 60 total people). The goal is to make this retreat more affordable to all who are interested in attending, and decrease the estimated $250 registration fee for all students as much as possible. 

 

I'm praying this event can be a spark for our faith communities in New York to only grow stronger post-pandemic, and help plant seeds of faith for the future of our communities. Thank you so much for taking the time to read and for your consideration! Questions/comments, please feel free to let me know as well.

 

-Rono

PS: Not in the mood to donate? That's alright. If you wanna come watch me crawl over the finish line instead, that should be at around 11:30AM in Prospect Park in Brooklyn this Sunday. :)