Pumping iron to make dreams come true, 29 area weightlifters participated in the Ninth Annual Lift for Kids.
Held Saturday afternoon at the Grand Traverse Mall, the event raised $9,000 with pledges still being counted for the Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Northwestern Michigan. These funds will help the local affiliate of the country's oldest youth mentoring organization boost the number of matches in the community.
Every dollar raised stays to benefit programs in the ten-county region, said Mary Sue Christian, executive director of Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Northwestern Michigan.
"We have 117 kids on the wait list," she noted. "It's been higher before and will probably be higher again because we're opening up all the school programs."
Twenty of the Lift For Kids participants train or work at Fit For You, which launched the event in 1997. Fitness center owners Vern and Jeff Gauthier were the sole lifters that first year, taking pledges on how many times they could hoist their body weight. Greatly exceeding expectations and raising more than $8,000, they decided that having more participants was the way to go.
For the past eight years, they and their colleagues and clients have been the backbone of the event. This year before pledges were counted, they raised almost 75 percent of the total.
"It's fun and anything we can do to help the community, it's just great," said Martha Cross, a personal trainer at the center.
Cross joined in by participating in the push ups contest, beating out her workout partner, colleague and friend Linda Hults by one push up totaled from three one-minute segments: 166 to 165.
Training intensely the past three weeks just for this event, the pair bulked up and added eight pounds in muscle just from push-ups. When either wavered at the strict regime, part of their preparation for this April's Grand Traverse Classic bodybuilding competition, the other was there to help.
"The biggest support is someone doing it with you, I wouldn't have been able to do this without her, it's a support team," noted Hults, adding of the cheering throng at the mall Saturday: "The crowd really helps, too."
The mission of Big Brothers/Big Sisters is to provide that kind of support and mentoring to youth by pairing them with a screened and trained adult. For community matches, a child is matched with an adult and they usually meet weekly until the child turns 18. They can attend community events together and share a range of activities during those few hours a week.
School matches allow the mentors to be a big brother or big sister to an elementary age student ages 6-12. The meetings take place at school during the school year and a child is only eligible through the sixth grade. Teachers or school social workers recommend students for the program.
"Some volunteers do one or the other and others do both," said Christian. "A lot of time what happens is they'll get matched with a child in the school program and decide that they want to transition to the community program. But it's completely up to the volunteer when they start and also up to the parent of the child."
"The big thing every year is the impact on the kids, the vast majority improve in academic performance and more than 80 percent improvement in self-confidence," she added of the school program. "It's amazing what an hour a week can do for a kids' self esteem."
For more information on Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Northwestern Michigan, call their Traverse City office at 932-7810 or see the web site www.bbbsnwmi.org.