Giving kids a running start

Run for the Hills!

Relax – this is not an order, but an exciting new charity event. Combining healthy outdoor activity with fundraising for kids, Run for the Hills is just the type of thing we like to be a part of. Orion Creative signed up as a gold partner of this worthwhile event. While we were at it, we offered to put their website together, too.

Run for the Hills will be held on Sunday, October 7. It is now open for registration of casual and competitive runners. The eight kilometre course threads through the Hills district in Sydney’s northwest. The first-time event is an opportunity to get the running shoes on and raise funds for the Reach for the Rainbow foundation. The money raised will fund an Early Intervention ‘Hub’ for children with disabilities or delays.

Publicity is essential for a new event to gain any traction. The event organisers have partnered up with businesses including The Hills News and the Hills M2 to leverage support and generate awareness. A website is a must, so we convinced our techie Jon to get involved and to give the event organisers a head start.

We offered to develop a website for Run for the Hills to provide information and coverage of the event, plus an online event registration portal to make it easy for people to get involved.

Jon built the site using a Silverstripe Content Management System (CMS) so the event managers could maintain the website content themselves. The site also serves as the key administrative tool for the organisers to manage entrants and teams and to view donation records.

When we knew Hills News was planning to run a story on the event, it was the obvious time to launch the site. Jon worked so quickly we swear he was whirring, but the site was comfortably up and functional by the time the story went to print. The Orion team have been starting to speculate, however, about the possibility of Jon actually being a robot with a human appearance.