Welcome to The WNC Grand Prix Festival

Benefiting WNC Children

Asheville Breakfast and Black Mountain Rotary Clubs present the WNC Grand Prix Cycling Weekend

With special appreciation to Asheville Fitness Club, the town of Black Mountain, the Blue Ridge Parkway and the National Forest Service.

The money raised from the WNC Grand Prix cycle races and century ride will be used for children at risk programs in Western North Carolina. Part of the money will go to Child Abuse Prevention Services to help fund their programs to protect physically and sexually abused children. Most of the remainder of the money will be used for other children-at-risk programs. Our goal is to provide a positive alternative to replace the negative choices that are so prevalent among the neighborhoods where many of these children live.

Politicians and even well meaning people often pay lip service to “it takes a village to raise a child.” Unfortunately, they usually mean children who live in middle to upper income family environments.

The money raised from the WNC Grand Prix cycle races will be used for children-at-risk programs in Western North Carolina.

Inner city children and children from low income families are somehow left out of the village. We don’t want to have to think about or deal with these children. Most of their parents don’t vote and cannot afford to contribute to a political candidate’s campaign, so they are pretty easy to ignore. As a result, these children are placed on the road to failure early in life. They may live in an abusive environment or one consisting of an almost complete lack of family values or parental nurturing. For example, Asheville has several public housing communities. Only 30% of the children that grow to maturity in public housing graduate from high school. Only a handful continues their education beyond high school. Thus, the cycle of failure repeats itself over and over again. Therefore, we have a choice. We can either create good citizens who contribute to our society in many material ways, or we can produce people who will be a continuous burden to our society, many of which will become predators on our society.