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Have you ever heard of “Extreme Volunteering”? Neither had we until Annie Bellemare and Laura Cornelissen came onto our radar!
Both of these awesome women have taken their parkrun volunteering roles way beyond Saturday morning. You won’t believe where they have volunteered…!
First up is Annie Bellemare, Quebec Ambassador and French Translation Ambassador in Canada. Annie translates many articles and other posts into French for parkrun social media channels.
In January, Annie took a step back from translating to prepare for the arrival of her second child, Elliot. However, this didn’t stop her from responding to a translation request from her hospital bed, minutes after giving birth after 26-hour labour!
Annie joked about wearing her high-vis at the time…but her husband Nic was actually wearing his volunteer milestone t-shirt while supporting Annie through the birth!
No sooner had we heard about Annie volunteering during childbirth, another wonderwoman popped up – Laura Cornelissen, a parkrun USA Ambassador.
In another act of extreme volunteering, Laura submitted the paperwork to launch the upcoming Danehy Park parkrun in Cambridge, MA during early contractions. Little Lachlan was born around 12 hours later!
Laura says “although I missed parkrun the following day, I have been able to make appearances with baby Lachlan every week since!” Lachlan will likely attend Danehy Park parkrun’s inaugural event on March 21; as well as his Mom being the Ambassador, his Dad Drew is one of the Event Directors!
We’re in awe of these multi-tasking “Extreme Volunteers” – and wish both families huge congratulations on the arrival of their two new mini-parkrunners!
All around the world, we’ve seen over 28,000 unique volunteers in the parkwalker role and they’ve parkwalked over 52,000 times! We speak to one of the parkwalkers, Cathy Hannon, about why she chooses to volunteer in her favourite role every Saturday morning. Cathy’s chronic condition means that parkwalking is the best option for her, she relishes the…
All of the talk around the barbecue during Memorial Day weekend had to do with our huge record breaking weekend at parkrun USA. We welcomed 3,204 runners and walkers to 61 different events from Biddeford to Bainbridge Island. Whether it was your 1st or 101st parkrun, we hope to see you back throughout the summer….
