GRO Races feels it is important to give back to the local communities where we hold our events.
We have chosen Wheels for Justice as our 2022 charity.
Wheels for Justice is dedicated to putting an end to Child Abuse.
They will be earmarking all True Grit Donations to got toward two St George-based organizations; the Washington County Children’s Justice Center and the DOVE Center. Earmarked donations will be collected during the registration process. You may also donate to Wheels for Justice directly to support other state-wide organizations.
If you want to get more involved in this cause you can voice your support by joining Team Wheels for Justice. You can officially join the team by (1) joining on Strava, (1) making Wheels of Justice their charity of choice on Amazon Smile, and (3) sending your name, city, and state to the charity administrator. If you officially join, you get a free t-shirt.
Thanks for supporting this great cause.
Child abuse is perhaps more prevalent and more devastating than any disease or societal ill confronting our country. It is hard to believe, but more than one in ten children in Utah will be sexually abused before they turn 18—one in ten! This is to say nothing of the other pernicious forms of child abuse. Studies show that these adverse childhood experiences have profound and lasting consequences for the child and, therefore, our society as a whole. These include social, emotional, and cognitive impairment, adoption of high-risk behaviors, mental illness, disease, and disability, all culminating in early death. This combination makes child abuse the leading determinant of health and psychosocial well-being, as well as individual and societal economic well-being. The estimated average lifetime cost per victim of nonfatal child abuse is $210,012 in 2010 dollars, including $32,648 in childhood health care costs, $10,530 in adult medical costs, $144,360 in productivity losses, $7,728 in child welfare costs, $6,747 in criminal justice costs, and $7,999 in special education costs.
Child abuse also has a direct link to the all-too-frequent mass shootings we are seeing these days. A study funded by the National Institute of Justice built a database dating back to 1966 of every mass shooter who shot and killed four or more people in a public place, and every shooting incident at schools, workplaces, and places of worship since 1999. Data reveal four commonalities among the perpetrators of nearly all the mass shootings studied. First among them: the vast majority of mass shooters in the study experienced early child abuse and exposure to violence at a young age.
