Dylan Bowman's Leaville Trail 100 Initiative

This past weekend, Alpine Initiatives was on the mind of ultra-marathon runner Dylan Bowman, as he raced his way across The Rockies. Dylan is an Aspen, CO local that decided to team up with Alpine Initiatives in order to raise funds for our work in Kenya.

Dylan successfully completed The Leadville Trail 100, with an astonishing time of 18 hours and 36 minutes. This time secured him a third place finish, in what is considered one of the most grueling foot races in the world. It was a truly amazing feat considering this was his first 100 mile race ever!

So, how did he do it? Dylan created a Facebook event and sent out a request to all his friends for donations per mile. Donations ranged from $.10/mile, all the way up to $5/mile. In all, over 50 people got behind Dylan in order to support his initiative. In the end Dylan was able to accumulate over $5,000 in pledges for AI!

The money that Dylan has raised will be going towards the completion of the dining hall at KACH. The AI team will be over in Kenya this fall to help out with the completion of the dining hall.

AI wants to send out a huge THANK YOU!!! To Dylan and all those that supported his initiative this past weekend. We absolutely love to see people like Dylan using their passions for good!

The Unreasonable Institute Global Summit

Alpine Initiatives members Emmanuelle Vital and Erik Wardell recently had the chance to visit Boulder, CO for a most unreasonable event. The Unreasonable Institute held their very first Global Summit, which highlighted the work of 22 young social entrepreneurs striving to make drastic changes in our world. The Unreasonable Institute brought together these 22 entrepreneurs from all over the world to incubate their projects, link them with mentors and help them find start-up capital. The entrepreneurs developed their projects for ten weeks and then presented them at the Global Summit to a packed house at the Atlas Center at The University of Colorado. The event was highly energetic and truly inspiring for the Alpine Initiatives members that attended.

The social ventures featured ranged from a Aussie trying to create a toilet paper brand that funds sanitation projects in the third world, to a young Afghani woman trying to end honor killings in her country. All 22 ventures highlighted were innovative takes on addressing either social or environmental development.

It is great to see that there are so many young people taking the initiative to address the problems that afflict our world!

Emmanulle and Erik pictured with Unreasonable Institute Mentor Paul Polak, Founder of IDE and Author of Out of Poverty