TRIBUTE TO MOM: Vernon man running marathon a day to raise funds to fight cancer

A Vernon man, with help from his partner, will be running one marathon a day during the month of May to pay tribute to his late mother and to raise funds for a life-saving piece of equipment at the Vernon Jubilee Hospital. Oliver Stankiewicz will be running approximately 300 kilometres a week and about 1,300 km during the month of May to honour his late mother and raise $150,000 for a piece of equipment the hospital uses to treat women affected by breast cancer. "The chemo, the radiotherapy, the vitamin-C treatments, all those were so taxing on my mom, and when I run, I remember that there are all these people going through basically the worst time of their life and they don't have a choice, but I have a choice to run out here every day and raising funds and awareness and I'm so thankful that my body is capable of doing that," Stankiewicz says. Oliver's mother, Laura Stankiewicz, was diagnosed with uterine cancer and rapidly succumbed to the illness in August of 2020. Feeling shocked and at a loss Oliver, who was not an avid runner at the time, decided to run and found it was an effective outlet to deal with the grief. Eventually came the desire to do more to pay tribute to his late mother and to the hospital that saw her through her last days. "I put out a goal that I was going to run 100 km on Mother's Day to pay tribute to Mom and to raise some funds for the hospital," he says. "I set a goal of $5,000 and was accepting pledges from the community and things took off and that year, after I finished the 100 km, we had raised around $30,000 and I was blown away by the generosity of people and their willingness to support the endeavour." It's after the success of their first Mother's Day run that, Marie Articus, Oliver's partner, came up with the idea for another fundraising event. The second Mother's Day run invited community members to run alongside Oliver and it was a massive success: $40,000 were raised. It became clear to the couple that this would become a yearly event. In 2023, another 100 km run took place during which more than $83,000 were raised, bringing the total funds raised in the three years to $150,000 and creating The Movement Project along the way. This year, it's the Vernon hospital that approached the couple asking for help to fund a piece of equipment used to treat individuals affected by breast cancer. "In terms of what it means to me and my family, along with the community, I thought this would be a great opportunity to fundraise for a particular piece of equipment and raise funds for the hospital; the piece of equipment is used in breast cancer surgeries and they've been trialling it at the hospital for six months," Oliver says. "The hospital goes through about 200 surgeries a year in terms of that particular lumpectomy breast cancer surgery, so it's a lot of use and it definitely impacts the community and the women undergoing that procedure on, almost, a daily basis." While The Movement Project has already raised $150,000 in the past years, that money has already been donated and an additional $150,000 must be raised this year alone to fund the hospital's piece of equipment. With such a large sum to raise, the couple knew this year's event had to be bigger and better. "About 252 days ago, I decided to run every single day and train for the month of May during which I will start pounding marathons out every day," Stankiewicz says. "This is my way of bringing attention to the community and showing how important this is for the hospital because we would love to help keep this equipment available." Stankiewicz has been preparing to run 42.2 km a day, which he will do on his way to and from work, keeping his daily routine alive and 'simply' adding four hours of running to it for one whole month. He views this as being his biggest challenge saying most people who decide to undertake this type of challenge usually don't have to deal with full-time work and keeping a household together. The preparation for the challenge has been underway for nearly one year now and he is mostly very excited to start at this stage in the process. On May 1, Stankiewicz will start running his daily marathons and encourages individuals to join him on his weekend runs. Those interested in donating to the cause and participating to the Mother's Day run should visit The Movement Project's website here https://www.themovementrun.com/ . To follow Stankiewicz's progress along with the evolution of fundraising, find The Movement Project on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/themovementrun/ and Strava https://www.strava.com/clubs/the-movement-829417 . To contact a reporter for this story, email Gabrielle Adams mailto:gadams@infonews.ca  or call (438) 830-1211 or email the editor mailto:news@infonews.ca . You can also submit photos, videos or news tips to the newsroom mailto:tips@infonews.ca  and be entered to win a monthly prize draw. We welcome your comments and opinions on our stories but play nice. We won't censor or delete comments unless they contain off-topic statements or links, unnecessary vulgarity, false facts, spam or obviously fake profiles. If you have any concerns about what you see in comments, email the editor in the link above. SUBSCRIBE to our awesome newsletter here https://infotel.ca/newsletter .