“Run Lola, Forrest, Itır, Run”
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 thatForrest 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, […]