Global Home Challenge: Ryan Iafigliola - The Fuller Center for Housing

GLOBAL HOME CHALLENGE

Ryan is The Fuller Center’s Vice President of International Operations and is the founder of the Bicycle Adventure, which has now raised more than $3 million for our work.

Over ... but not over

As we near the end of our inaugural Global Home Challenge, I’m struck by three things:

1. How much fun we still had! It wasn’t the summer any of us expected, but we still bonded and grew relationships with each other. It even brought us closer to our international partners through the weekly video calls.

2. The amazing passion of Fuller Center supporters. To have 110 participants sign up and participate vigorously with both miles and funds in the midst of this year’s turmoil is truly incredible.

3. The impact this event will have. With so many trip cancellations, our partners desperately needed a lifeline. The funds raised through the event is just that and will keep hope alive in the communities where we work.

So many heroes stepped up to make the event successful:

Mike Goodloe and Lee Zwanziger who took a big unexpected leap of faith when they decided to put their faith into action by matching $50,000 in gifts, which energized our fundraising in the last few weeks and enabled us to well surpass our $200,000 goal.
Incredible mileage champs like Mike Wieser, Tim Buscheck, and Jim Hartman who rode more miles this summer than we normally do on an actual cross country bike ride! Let that soak in for a minute. And others rode more than our entire West Coast ride, like Ed Vander Pol, Tom Weber, Dan Sheridan, Jackie Rouse, Rob Erskine, Neil Mullikin and Gary Schroeder.
The 11 weekly winners and top 10 finishers, who each rose up in key moments to earn their well-deserved moment in the spotlight as well as some great prizes from our sponsor heroes like KT Tape, doTERRA, Cafe Campesino, Road ID, Koinonia Farm, Ironclad and Keto Brick.
The dedicated, so-called ordinary participants who still did extraordinary things to make a difference. Like Judy and Verne Blalack getting in their one or two mile daily walk, and Carolyn Hinds walking and biking with her two young grandchildren. In total, 110 participants contributed either miles or fundraising, and there were well over 600 donors.

This event has provided a crucial stopgap to support ongoing work around the world, but unfortunately it appears that we are still a long way from seeing this pandemic end. Yet, the need remains. So we’ll keep trying to get creative, and we look forward to continuing on this journey together!

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