Miles for Life: Quarantined Premier Students Choose to Make a Big Impact Instead of Sitting Still

I asked Ed this week if there were any students who I could interview to see what they’re doing to pass the time during quarantine. I was envisioning my blog to be about kids on video games, enjoying snacks, downtime, completing school online, and sleeping in.

My expectations were very wrong. He introduced me to David and Charlie and said I might enjoy hearing what they’re doing during this time. So, I set up a ZOOM call with them tonight and couldn’t believe my ears as they told me about how they’ve chosen to use their quarantine time. I hope you’ll be blessed by these two young men, as I was. 

Let me introduce you to these two amazing young men.

David is a junior at Brentwood Christian School in Austin. He’s lived in the United States for four years. He’s enjoying living his second year with Derek and Miranda. He really enjoys Derek’s cooking and his favorite food that Derek makes is his korean pork ribs. Sounds delicious!

Charlie is a junior at Cedar Park High School. He does not have a host family because he lives with his mom here in Austin. He’s not enjoying doing his classes online during this time. For him, it’s hard to be motivated to work hard at home. His experience is that he has to learn 100% on his own and then the teachers offer question and answer sessions over ZOOM. He tried to figure it all out for himself. He’s frustrated because he had a 108% in AP Macroeconomics and now all his classes have been adjusted to pass/fail and they will not help or hurt his GPA. 

David started a running club to help encourage Premier students to remain strong, active and healthy during this time. He knew running would help increase their immune systems. He started with about 30 students and they started making goals to work toward. Then, one day he and Charlie started thinking about how they can use their running to help with the Corona Virus. They both were concerned about the perception of Chinese people during this time. They also have heard people saying racist things against Chinese people and they wanted to combat that in a positive way. 

They saw how Premier students raised money for Wuhan instead of the Chinese New Year and it inspired David and Charlie to do something similar. That’s when they started Miles for Life. It works like this: for every one mile they generate $10 in donations. The donations mostly come from their parents back in China who want to help Americans and help their children be healthy and helpful. 

The running group started with 30 members and it ended up having 47. At the conclusion of their running challenge they were able to raise $5,500, which equals 550 miles to help purchase masks, food, respirators and help hospitals. He mentioned that Mr. Wu is their inspiration for running so many miles because he runs about 7 or 8  miles per day! Way to go Mr. Wu!

And, way to go David and Charlie! I’m so proud of you. You inspire all of us to be better people!