CITY OF GRANTS N.M. – The City of Grants Recreation Department will be hosting a ‘Back to School August Fun Run’ on Saturday, August 21 in order to help students kick in the new school year with a fun activity, all while collecting school supply donations for students.
The fun run will be held at the Grants Recreation Center, also known as Future Foundations Family Center (FFFC), located at 551 Washington Avenue in Grants, New Mexico. The event will consist of three separate activities: walking, running, and biking. The walking portion of the event will consist of a distance of five kilometers, the running portion will also be five kilometers, and the biking portion will be ten kilometers.
The ‘5K Walk’, according to the online flyer for the event, will begin at 7:00 a.m., the ‘5K Run’ will begin at 7:10 a.m., and the ‘10K Bike’ will begin at 7:15 a.m. Interested students and community members may register for the event online by visiting the weblink https://www.webscorer.com/register?raceid=250059. As a part of the registration requirements, participants must also submit a $1 entry fee, as well as “a donation of any type of school supply for CDEC Fill the Bucket Drive.”
The ‘Fill the Bucket Drive’ is an initiative that Continental Divide Electric Cooperative began towards the end of July 2021, in which they “team[ed] up with local businesses to collect school supplies for distribution to service-area K-12 students,” said an online CDEC social media post. Donations to the drive have been accepted all throughout August at locations including CDEC’s Grants or Gallup offices, Cibola General Hospital, City of Grants Recreation Department/FFFC, Coyote Del Malpais Golf Course, Grants Public Library, and Milan Supermart.
As a part of this initiative, CDEC hosted a successful school supply drive on August 7 at the local Walmart in Grants, New Mexico – an event in which they also gave out an iPad to a selected winner. CDEC also recently reported on social media that they received a donation of about $1,000 in school supplies from Homestake Mining Company in support of the ‘Fill the Bucket Drive’. Now, as the end of August nears and a new school year has begun, CDEC partners with the Grants Recreation Department to collect even more supplies for local students so that they can enter the school year prepared with everything they need to succeed and have a great school year – all while being active.
“Together, we can make a difference to the start of a new school year for our area youth!” proclaimed CDEC via social media.