Telling Room will use race proceeds to expand reach
Courtesy / The Telling Room
The Telling Room staff members who ran in Saturday's TD Beach to Beacon 10K race are shown here with the donation check for the nonprofit.
The Telling Room, a Portland-based nonprofit that seeks to empower youth through writing, is gearing up to expand it reach and program offerings.
That's how it plans to use the $30,000 donation it received as the 2019 TD Beach to Beach 10K race beneficiary, according to the group's executive director, Celine Bourke Kuhn.
After Saturday's race in Cape Elizabeth, the TD Charitable Foundation presented a donation check to the Telling Room, which also had a staff team in the race. The TD Charitable Foundation is the charitable giving arm of TD Bank.
Kuhn told Mainebiz on Monday that the organization is honored to have been selected as this year's beneficiary, adding that the support will help it keep core programs free to children and their families, and boost its visibility in the community to reach new audiences.
"The timing couldn't be better as this year marks our 15th anniversary," she said, adding that the partnership will also help the Telling Room deepen its programmatic reach.
This September, for example, it will launch a youth development program for high school juniors and seniors called Second Story that will focus on career and student college readiness, social justice, poetry and performance, she said.
She also gave a shout-out to Telling Room runners who ran Saturday morning, and students that held tape at the finish line.
"Truly it has been an experience of a lifetime," she said.
Contacted separately by Mainebiz, Larry Wold, TD Bank's Maine market president, said one of the reasons the Telling Room was chosen as this year's beneficiary is because TD Bank "truly embraces the idea of diversity and inclusion." He also said The Telling Room allowed people to participate in Beach to Beacon events who might not have otherwise, "just as its mission helps those who might feel they don't have a voice to find their voice."
"It added a dimension to the inclusiveness of the event that was wonderful," he added.
In 2017-18, the Telling Room had an annual operating budget of around $800,000.
This year's participants and winners
More than 6,500 people ran in the 22nd annual Beach to Beacon on Saturday, including 30 elite athletes.
Alex Korio, 28, of Kenya, dominated the race from the start and finished first 27 minutes and 34 seconds, while fellow Kenyan Joyciline Jepkosgei, 25, was the women's elite champion, finishing in 31 minutes and five seconds. She came close to beating the current course record of 30 minutes and 41 seconds.
Maine native and running legend Joan Benoit Samuelson, winner of the first Olympic women's marathon in 1984, founded the TD Beach to Beacon to realize her vision of creating a major international road race in her home state.
Elite athletes competed for more than $90,000 in prize money, with $10,000 awarded to winners in the men's and women's open races and payouts for the top 10 runners overall, courtesy of title sponsor TD Bank. Also included was a $23,000 purse for American men and women, sponsored by Dunkin' Donuts, split evenly among the top five American men and women with a $5,000 top prize.
The race started near the Crescent Beach entrance on Route 77 and wrapped up at Fort Williams Park near the Portland Head Light lighthouse.
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