History
In 2024, we will be celebrating our 11th annual Race to Feed Kids in support of Mary's Meals!
While the location of the race has changed over time, the purpose of our race remains the same: to feed children in most desperate need of food. Organized by a group of local volunteers who are passionate about feeding children, the purpose of this race is to sponsor one of Mary’s Meals’ schools in Africa. To date, we have been able to feed thousands of children because of the support of our 5K/10K participants.
The first Mary’s Meals' Race to Feed Kids race took place in 2013 at Raccoon River Park. The race participants consisted mostly of our friends and family, but we achieved our modest goal of partially feeding a Mary’s Meals school. Raccoon River Park remained the location of our race (consisting of a 5K race only) for the next three years, with each year surpassing the previous one in terms of participants and proceeds to Mary’s Meals.
In 2017, our venue changed to Valley Junction in West Des Moines, and we added our 10K race. Our new location, and the efforts of our volunteers, led to even bigger and better results. In our first year at Valley Junction, we had 518 race participants and were able to fully fund our Mary’s Meals school! We had similar results in our second year at Valley Junction in 2018.
In 2019, our race location moved to the Beaverdale neighborhood in Des Moines. Again, we had a great turnout and were able to feed 400 children for an entire year with our race proceeds! Due to the pandemic, we did not host a race in 2020, but were able to fully-fund our school through generous donations of our Des Moines family.
The next year, our race returned! Running through the beautiful neighborhoods surrounding Greenwood Park, our 5K/10K race was a great success. Being one of the first races to take place in Des Moines since the outbreak of COVID-19, our priority was to ensure the health and safety of our participants. We accomplished that goal and received several compliments on the organization and new location of our race. And again, we were successful in feeding the students of Mary’s Meals’ Mcheza school for an entire year.
In 2023, we hosted our race in beautiful downtown Des Moines with our race starting at the Women of Achievement Bridge, 700 Robert D Ray Drive in Des Moines. It was such a success and we received such great feedback on the route, we are keeping the same location for 2024. We hope to see you there!
