RAGBRAI 2022
What do bike rides and AIDS orphans have in common?
Marc Reich.
Over the past ten years, Marc has ridden his bike nearly 4,000 miles and raised over $30,000 for AIDS orphans in Southern Africa. Every summer, Marc rides in RAGBRAI, the Des Moines Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa, and asks his friends to sponsor him with donations to AIDS Orphan Care.
The Register’s Great Annual Bike Ride across Iowa (RAGBRAI)
RAGBRAI is the longest, oldest, biggest bike ride in the world. Riders pedal from the Missouri River to the Mississippi River for approximately 475 miles over the course of a week via a different route each year.
RAGBRAI began 49 years ago as a challenge between two Des Moines Register’s employees. They announced their plan to ride across Iowa in the newspaper six weeks before they were to begin. Three hundred people showed up for the first ride and a tradition was born. Now RAGBRAI has 8,500 riders from around the world, with a planned route this year of 462 miles, including 12,954 feet of climbs. The 2022 ride starts in Sergeant Bluff on July 24th and ends in Lansing on July 30th.
Marc Reich first became interested in RAGBRAI after reading an article about it in the Wall Street Journal. He tried to recruit a group of friends to join him, but as impressed as they were by the ride, they were not ready for such a commitment. Years later, a friend shared Marc’s enthusiasm for undertaking the challenge, and the two formed a team that is approaching their 9th annual ride.
Surprisingly, Marc is not an avid biker. While he is in good physical shape, he does not specifically train heavily leading up to the event. Instead, he gets his trusty bike out of his Connecticut garage and heads off to the Iowa heat, which averages 85 degrees in July, with an average humidity of 70%!
Marc’s Involvement with AIDS Orphan Care
Seven years ago, Marc learned about AIDS Orphan Care from his high school friend, Sandy Phoenix. Sandy, a nurse practitioner, and her husband, Phil Elkin, a physician, had moved to Lesotho, Southern Africa, to help launch a training program for family doctors. While in Lesotho, Sandy met Deborah Kutenplon. Deborah and her family had moved to Lesotho for a year to help with the HIV/AIDS pandemic by volunteering at the Tsepong HIV Clinic. When she returned home, Deborah started AIDS Orphan Care, an all-volunteer nonprofit dedicated to helping AIDS orphans and HIV-positive children in Lesotho.
After learning about AIDS Orphan Care, Marc coupled his RAGBRAI ride with raising funds, asking friends and family to sponsor his ride. Over the years, Marc has raised more than $30,000 for AIDS Orphan Care, and together with his wife Karen, matches each dollar raised.
AIDS Orphan Care
Lesotho, a tiny country in Southern Africa, has the 2nd highest HIV/AIDS rate in the world, with 1 in 4 adults HIV-positive and over 100,000 AIDS orphans. Lesotho has just 1 doctor for every 10,000 people. Although the government provides free HIV and TB care, many patients must travel long distances for it. Doctors’ visits for other health problems cost about $2 apiece, beyond the means of many families. Poverty and malnutrition are widespread—one third of young children there suffer growth stunting from chronic malnutrition.
So AIDS Orphan Care established The Peanut Butter Project, distributing a large jar of high protein peanut butter to malnourished, HIV-positive kids at each doctor’s visit. Then they expanded to help support orphans at the Mamello School, an elementary school established to provide AIDS orphans a free, high quality education. Before AIDS Orphan Care got involved, the kids at the Mamello School sometimes got school lunch, but by the end of each month, the money would run out. So some days, lunch was only a slice or two of bread. So AIDS Orphan Care funded a free school lunch program. Then they realized that, for the poorest orphans, free lunch was not enough. Hunger pains made it impossible to concentrate on morning lessons. Many had been taken in by elderly grandmothers when their parents died of AIDS, and were too poor for adequate food at home. So a free school breakfast program was added.
During the covid pandemic lockdown, emergency food boxes were delivered to the children’s villages, along with lesson packets they could complete at home. As AIDS Orphan Care raised more money, they were able to expand support, to make sure AIDS orphans and HIV-positive kids got not only a quality education and enough to eat but also transportation to doctors’ visits, medications, warm clothes in winter, and covid safety supplies like masks and handwashing stations. AIDS Orphan Care helps the Mamello School enact its motto: “We stand and care.”
How You Can Help
Marc is always looking for interested team members to join his team. If you are interested in joining him or simply speaking to him to learn more, please reach out to Marc at reich@ironwoodcap.com.
Also, if you want to support Marc in his amazing accomplishment of completing ~475 miles in the heat of the Iowa summer, please donate.
AIDS Orphan Care has no paid staff and no office overhead, your donation goes directly to help AIDS orphans.
· $25 buys a school uniform, shoes, and school supplies to keep an orphan in school.
· $50 feeds an orphan free school breakfasts for an entire year.
· $100 purchases laying hens for eggs, pigs for meat, and seeds for the school’s large vegetable garden, for a sustainable source of food.
· $250 sponsors a month of high protein peanut butter for every malnourished HIV-positive child at the pediatric HIV Clinic.
· $500 supports at teacher’s salary for 3 months, to provide a high quality education to the children.
