TrailHiker donates MOP400,000 to local charities

The 7th Sands China Macau Eco TrailHiker took place Saturday along different natural trails in Coloane. The event attracted 2,000 participants with registration filling up in a record time of only 18 hours.
On the day, 500 teams competed for the top honor in two different racing categories, a 10km family run and a 30km corporate challenge.
According to the director of the Macau Eco TrailHiker, Robert Kirby, in addition to raising funds for local charity groups and promoting environmental awareness, the event is aimed at “promoting health, wellness, team spirit, commitment to excellence and contribution to the community.”
The winning team in the 10 km race finished the course in 49 minutes and 35 seconds, while in the 30 km course the champion finished in 2 hours and 48 minutes.
To encourage more female participation in the event, the organizer added two special prizes in this year’s edition: the “First All-Female Team 10km Award” and the “First All-Female Team 30km Award.”
Winners of the latter award, Run Plus Woman Team 1, told the Times the charity run was meaningful because they participated for a cause. “The group was formed by people who love running. We did it!” they cheered, adding that raising funds for charity was another of the reasons they joined.
Kirby expressed his satisfaction with the turnout of the charity run, but noted that there would always be room for improvement.
This year the event attracted more crew volunteers than in previous years, who were required to undergo training. Kirby hopes to offer more opportunities for crew training in next year’s edition.
“I think a big improvement this year is that we have more crew. We have more crew than we needed, which is great,” he explained to the Times. “I think overall it’s been a huge success. The weather was very kind to us,” he added.

Title sponsor Sands China set a goal to maintain the event’s recycling rate at 40 percent.  Robert Kirby stressed that the event became even more environmentally friendly this year as they only served waters in large containers, refusing to use plastic water bottles.
At the closing ceremony on Saturday at The Venetian Macao, cheques of a total of MOP 400,000 were presented to the two beneficiaries: Macau Rotary Club and Richmond Fellowship of Macau.
Rotary Club of Macau will use the money to help autism patients while Richmond Fellowship of Macau will help the development of art projects for service users and Fun Lok Physical and Mental Health Service Station in Seac Pai Van.
James Sou, director of Richmond Fellowship, assured they would invest this year’s charity funds into organizing programs at the association’s physical and mental health stations in Seac Pai Van.
“According to our analytical data at the affordable housing complex, there are quite a lot of residents who need mental health education and that’s why we’re going to spend most of the funds to organize relevant activities to help them,” he explained to TDM.
A Rotary Club of Macau representative said the group intends to use the support provided by the charity event to hire experienced therapists from Hong Kong to provide training services to families for its members who have autism.
Macau Daily Times is the main media partner of the event.