Laureen Hurt rode the entire Great Allegheny Passage for the first time last year with the Bike4Haiti. She would encourage others to try the Bike4Haiti themselves: “The GAP is really beautiful and there are stops along the way—a physical challenge at any age is a great thing! I’ll never forget the people I did this ride with.”

They say that necessity is the mother of invention and Haiti H2O’s Bike4Haiti event was certainly born of necessity. In 2019, Church of the Ascension’s youth group was preparing to send its youth group to Haiti, with Haiti H2O, for a mission trip. The teenagers and adult leaders had signed up, and training had begun. But by March of that year, the US State Department issued a warning for travelers to Haiti, so the youth group pivoted, opting instead to bike all the way from Pittsburgh to the Haitian Embassy in Washington, D.C. By 2020, when it was clear that it would still be too unsafe to take groups to visit our partners in rural Haiti, we decided to move forward with an annual Bike4Haiti event. This began as a ride from Pittsburgh to Cumberland, with shorter options offered as well. One of the first families to join us were the Teufels.

Jaime Stilwell’s first run with Haiti H2O’s Run for Hope was unorthodox to say the least: although she had already registered and been training for the half-marathon in 2020, by March the Pittsburgh Marathon was canceled amid the growing fears about the CoVID-19 virus. Haiti H2O had to pivot and Jaime pivoted with us. The race went virtual and although fundraising in such circumstances could have been a major challenge, Jaime credits her donors with giving her the energy to continue. “[The fundraising] kept me honest,” she admitted. Jaime ran virtually and the ‘unprecedented’ run of 2020 was a success.