Rob Clobes
City of residence: Claremont
Age: 36
Rob Clobes wasn’t just running the Los Angeles Marathon on Sunday to see if he could complete his first race of such a magnitude, he was providing clean water to children in Africa. Through the Flipside Church in Rancho Cucamonga, Clobes was connected with team World Vision, which provides clean drinking water for life to a child for each donation of $50.
Clobes surpassed his target of raising $50 for each mile of the 26.2-mile race to net donations totaling $2,060, a sum that will give the equivilent of 41 children clean water for life in an effort to build wells in Africa.
“Most of these kids don’t even get to go to school because they spend all day walking miles to get clean water,” Clobes said. “I’ve always felt a pull to Africa and I’ve wanted to help out. It worked out great to be able to do this with the marathon.”
Clobes was joined in the marathon by several others from Flipside Church, who added significantly to his total in an effort to fight the estimated 4,000 children under 5 years old who die each year from diseases spread by unclean water.
The donations, however were harder-earned than Clobes anticipated.
“It was brutal,” Clobes said. “Running that much is a lot mental and obviously there’s the physical part. But it was a lot of fun and there’s people encouraging the whole way through. Now that I’ve seen what it’s like I want to do it again.”
