When I started training for marathons and raising money for NGOs about five years ago I got interesting reactions from many of my friends: “Please don’t run, you’ll hurt yourself?”, “If you have problems, you can talk to me”, “Will you go to the next Olympics?”, “Sure I’ll contribute to your campaign, but you don’t need to run 42km”. I knew that both amateur running and fund-raising were new concepts in Turkey and that
Forrest Gump, Run Lola Run, Pink Floyd’s “Run like Hell” were the first things that came to their mind when I said “I’m training for a marathon”. In their minds, the people who ran were either professional athletes or were running away from something — in both literal and metaphorical senses. And here I was trying to explain to them that I was running for a cause. It was not easy at the start, but I kept running and sending fundraising e-mails to everyone I knew.
Things started getting easy during last winter when I joined forces with five of my running friends and founded Adim Adim (Step by Step), Turkey’s first charity running group. One of them, Renay Onur, had already been running and raising money for Spinal Cord Paralytics Society of Turkey (TOFD). Before we invited amateur runners to train with us and raise money we conducted focus groups and interviews with potential volunteers and consulted with Erdal Yıldırım, general manager of the Vehbi Koç Foundation, on the culture of charitable giving in Turkey and trainer Ertan Hatipoğlu on preparing running programs for beginner, intermediate and advanced runners as well as walkers.
The first target race was the 2008 Öger Antalya Marathon and project to be supported was TOFD’s electric wheel chair campaign. In less than four months, with support and advice from several professionals, we ran a successful ad campaign, prepared our web page and organized talks on long-distance running, injury prevention and fund-raising and most importantly, trained with 62 runners who joined Adim Adim. All of the volunteers, some of them first-time marthoners, completed their target race in Antalya and together raised 75.000 TL for TOFD. Seven months later, 80 runners completed the 30th Istanbul Eurasia Marathon and 15K race and raised 125.000TL for the same campaign.
Our number kept growing in 2009. In a couple of weeks, about 200 of us will run the 4. Öger Antalya Marathon. We already sent out our fund-raising emails. This year, alongside with TOFD, we will raise money for TEGV (The Turkish Educational Volunteers Foundation), and their “One Child Changes, Turkey Changes” campaign.
200 runners among İstanbul’s millions are not only trying to raise awareness and money but also challenging the preconceptions that surround running. I guess only when their number reaches thousands I will stop getting the “what are you running away from?” question.
