{"id":4274,"date":"2011-05-04T13:59:48","date_gmt":"2011-05-04T18:59:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thewaterproject.org\/community\/?p=4274"},"modified":"2017-11-28T10:54:55","modified_gmt":"2017-11-28T15:54:55","slug":"one-persons-loss-is-anothers-gain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewaterproject.org\/community\/2011\/05\/04\/one-persons-loss-is-anothers-gain\/","title":{"rendered":"One Person’s Loss is Another’s Gain"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>We got a great email a few weeks ago from Stephen Lasky, Vice President of Business Planning and Analysis at Sephora.\u00a0 Stephen had undertaken a huge goal that would result in better health for himself and provide an inspiration to Sephora employees.\u00a0 Being the \u2018others\u2019 minded person that Stephen is, he wanted to tie that accomplishment to a cause \u2026 the cause of bringing clean, safe water to those without.\u00a0 We could try to tell Stephen\u2019s story, but why not read it directly from Stephen himself \u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cIn August of 2009 after a lifetime of battling obesity, I had a moment of clarity that the time had come.\u00a0 At 5\u20195\u201d and 251 pounds I started a journey to change my life. At that time I was taking medications for high blood pressure, cholesterol, and gout. \u00a0In September of 2010, 13 months after I began my journey I had dropped 100 pounds and was free from all medications.\u00a0 It was in September 2010 that I tried for the first time in my life to run a mile without stopping.\u00a0 After running for 5 minutes on the treadmill I felt pretty good and was encouraged to keep going\u202615 minutes later I had run my first mile.\u00a0 One month later I decided I needed closure to the process I started a year earlier; that closure would be signing up for a \u00bd marathon.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I had been considering ways to raise money for the Water Project before this time, but this goal of running 13.1 miles felt like the perfect opportunity to challenge those around me to donate.\u00a0 I set a goal of $2,500 for myself and opened a donation page sending out a request to everyone I knew personally and at work that I thought would support my goal.\u00a0 Within one week I was above $2,500 and raised my goal to $5,000.\u00a0 Over a 12 week period from January through March I trained 5 days a week running over 200 miles during the process.\u00a0 As the final weeks approached I topped $5,200 in donations.\u00a0\u00a0 The fact that so many had given so much kept me motivated; how could I not run one more mile for those in need.\u00a0 On March 27, 2011 I completed the Oakland Half Marathon in 2:28 minutes without walking one single step and in the process changed the lives of many who will now have water to drink.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n



\nStephen, we applaud you and thank all the folks who supported you, both physically through training, emotionally through encouragement, and financially through donations.\u00a0 Our thanks to Sephora for their matching gifts program that also made this well project at a Uganda school<\/a> possible.\u00a0 You all are an inspiration!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We got a great email a few weeks ago from Stephen Lasky, Vice President of Business Planning and Analysis at Sephora.\u00a0 Stephen had undertaken a huge goal that would result in better health for himself and provide an inspiration to Sephora employees.\u00a0 Being the \u2018others\u2019 minded person that Stephen is, he wanted to tie that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured-groups"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewaterproject.org\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewaterproject.org\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewaterproject.org\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewaterproject.org\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewaterproject.org\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4274"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/thewaterproject.org\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57828,"href":"https:\/\/thewaterproject.org\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4274\/revisions\/57828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewaterproject.org\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewaterproject.org\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewaterproject.org\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}