{"id":2056,"date":"2015-02-19T09:56:24","date_gmt":"2015-02-19T16:56:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pueblowarriors.org\/blog\/?p=2056"},"modified":"2015-02-23T10:02:55","modified_gmt":"2015-02-23T17:02:55","slug":"warriors-inspired-challenged-by-trans-atlantic-row-boat-queen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pueblowarriors.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/warriors-inspired-challenged-by-trans-atlantic-row-boat-queen\/","title":{"rendered":"Warriors Inspired, Challenged By Trans-Atlantic Row-Boat Queen"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Cynthia Rojas<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Katie Spotz visits Pueblo High School<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Nearly 450 Pueblo students and faculty members packed the school\u2019s auditorium on Friday, Feb. 13, to attend a presentation from Katie Spotz, a self-motivated young woman who has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in a variety of stellar physical achievements\u2014raising money to provide clean drinking water to an estimated one billion people on this planet that don’t have access to it.<\/p>\n

Nearly 5,000 people (mostly children) each day die from drinking bad water, she said. Most of the countries that she has helped raised money for to provide safe water include Haiti, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Kenya.<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t just stand around and let this happen anymore, so I started to challenge myself to help as much as one person can,\u201d the Ohio-born Spotz said.<\/p>\n

On March 14, 2013, the then 22-year-old Spotz became the younger person (and only the second woman) to row across the Atlantic Ocean, unattended and without aid\u2014approximately 3,000 miles, from Africa to South America! During the 70-day challenge, Spotz said she had very little diversion except for a day interacting with dolphins and the several occasions of avoiding enormous freight ships.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would listen to a lot of music and comedians on my headphones,\u201d Spotz said. \u201cOnce I hit the midway point, halfway across the Atlantic Ocean, I really had to focus on rowing just one mile at a time. One mile\u2026one mile\u2026instead of the 1,500 that I still had to row to reach the South American coast.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the end, her \u201cRow for Water\u201d event raised more than $150,000 to provide safe drinking water. But, she didn\u2019t stop there. In a valiant effort to raise even more awareness of providing safe drinking water to one billion people, Spotz has a resum\u00e9 of unbelievable, impressive, physical feats, including swimming the entire length of the Allegheny River as well as cycling across the United States in seven days\u2014even with a broken pelvis! Spotz eventually traveled to Kenya, and there she helped 10,000 students, first-hand, in that African nation gain access to safe drinking water.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was an amazing opportunity to actually be in the middle of this crisis,\u201d Spotz said, \u201cand also to be a part of the solution.\u201d She added that she was appalled at how many people in Kenya are without clean drinking water\u2014maybe only one person in 1,000 have access to healthy water each day.<\/p>\n

Spotz spends most of her time traveling around the United States helping and inspiring schools to raise money for a project called \u201cSchools for Water\u201d.<\/p>\n

Students in attendance were definitely inspired by Spotz\u2019 achievements. Senior Narda Garcia said, \u201cI was totally captivated by the presentation\u2014especially because a woman defied all of the odds and stayed tenacious, never giving up. We students can definitely learn from her determination and perseverance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pueblo is now challenged to raise money for \u201cSchools for Water\u201d. According to Ms. Mary Wallace, government teacher and the organizer of this presentation, Pueblo has committed to raising $1,500 and challenging Cholla<\/a>, whose goal is to raise $1,000.<\/p>\n

Wallace said that she is communicating with our administrators about ways to raise money in support of \u201cSchools for Water\u201d, including a \u201chat day\u201d in which students will be allowed to wear hats for a day in exchange for one dollar. More activities will be announced throughout the semester, she added.<\/p>\n

\u201cStudents are needed to help with raising money [for \u201cSchools for Water\u201d] because I want this fund-raising event to be student-based,\u201d Wallace said. \u201cThis is a great opportunity for students to show leadership and responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n

Junior Michael Montijo, who attended the presentation, said, \u201cSpotz really brought the global water crisis into the spotlight. In today\u2019s world, there is no excuse for unsanitary water or food.\u201d<\/p>\n

Armando Corral, a sophomore, said, \u201cI was really motivated by the presentation. I want to help this situation by not wasting water in the future. We can all do a little something to make a huge difference.\u201d<\/p>\n

Senior Ariel Garrison was inspired by the presentation. \u201cI think she is admirable for raising awareness to a topic that I was not fully aware of until now. Ms. Spotz is a awesome role model for all of us, and we should all find our own individual ways to help those who are not as fortunate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another senior Narda Garcia, \u201cI can\u2019t believe that she continued the race with a broken pelvis! Talk about tenacity! I think that she truly inspired a lot of us to persevere under difficult situations. After the presentation, my friends and I were talking about what we can do to make the world a place where we give more than we take.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Cynthia Rojas Nearly 450 Pueblo students and faculty members packed the school\u2019s auditorium on Friday, Feb. 13, to attend a presentation from Katie Spotz, a self-motivated young woman who has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in a variety of stellar physical achievements\u2014raising money to provide clean drinking water to an estimated one billion … Continue reading Warriors Inspired, Challenged By Trans-Atlantic Row-Boat Queen<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[158,217,133,196,38],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pA2u4-xa","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pueblowarriors.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2056"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pueblowarriors.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pueblowarriors.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pueblowarriors.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pueblowarriors.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2056"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/pueblowarriors.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2061,"href":"https:\/\/pueblowarriors.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2056\/revisions\/2061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pueblowarriors.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pueblowarriors.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pueblowarriors.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}