5K races have helped Ugandan students.
Tuesday night the Wake Forest Board of Commissioners honored Wake Forest-Rolesville High graduating senior Austin Shaw for his volunteer efforts and for being named one of the top two student volunteers in North Carolina and receiving the Prudential Spirit of Community award.
“Wow! I am truly honored,” Shaw said after Mayor Vivian Jones read the proclamation declaring May 19 as Austin Shaw Day and calling him one of the town’s unsung heroes.
Shaw has two events on his volunteer resume. In 2007, he organized the Slam Jam 3-on-3 Youth Basketball Tournament that raised funds to help renovate a town park.
But the bigger event by far has been the 5K race, Steps for Schools, that began in 2008 to raise money for a vocational school in Uganda. It was part of a larger program called Embrace Uganda.
Shaw said he was working through the school’s Key Club sponsored by the Wake Forest Kiwanis Club. “I wanted to do something that would benefit people overseas. He knew Paige and Dirk Hamp, who had adopted a child from Uganda and wanted to raise money for the impoverished people there. “They needed a catalyst event,” Shaw said, and that led him to begin planning for the race.
“I worked with (Wake Forest Police Chief) Greg Harrington, and he gave us policemen to administer the race.”
The two years of the race have raised over $7,000 for the Uganda school. “There are now twenty kids attending school for free and another twenty will be attending from the money from the second race. They are also sleeping in bunk beds instead of old mattresses.” Shaw said members of the Wake Forest Baptist Church delivered the beds and the check from the race.
Shaw will attend UNC-Chapel Hill on a Morehead-Cain Scholarship.