Running on Love

- Originally posted on November 20, 2009 -

GOTR Founder and Vision Keeper Molly Barker tells a story I’ve yet to recount without crying (neither can Molly) about Shakira, a 4th grader who had cigarette burns on her legs, wore thick dark glasses, and who didn’t speak. Molly discovered Shakira had been abused by her birth family. For her talking, she’d been burned with cigarettes and “timed out” in dark closets for so long that light hurt her eyes.

She now lived with a loving foster family, and she seemed so happy in GOTR – she ran and relayed and wrote her answers – but the girls and coaches just accepted that she’d given up talking.

At the next to last lesson, the girls form a circle and each of them shares one word to describe her experience in GOTR. Our girls say things like “fun,” “everything,” and even “empowered.” When Shakira’s turn came, she drew a deep breath… and everyone hoped…but instead… she just let out a big sigh…and they continued around the circle. At the end of season celebration, Shakira handed Molly a note which read “the word I wanted to say was LOVE.”

Girls on the Run Nashville runs on LOVE, and that, for me, has been the unexpected icing on the cake.

I knew I would enjoy running/playing/working with the girls, but I had no idea how much I would be moved and humbled by those drawn to support the mission: career women (and a Few Good Men), moms, retirees, teachers, guidance counselors, lawyers, Vanderbilt, Belmont and Lipscomb students, runners, walkers, Senior Olympians, fitness trainers, academics, doctors, nurses, and prize winning triathletes like Sydney Bush Foster, shown pacing Happy Hope to a 1st place finish (age 9 and under) at our first community race, the Frostbite 5k. Sydney said that Hope’s victory meant more to her than any race she herself had ever won.

As Fleet Feet Sports owner Christi Beth Adams says, “I love this group of women!”

I recently read Passion with a Purpose, an entry Center on Non Profit Management consultant (and mother of T/TH Percy Priest Girl on the Run Hairy Harris) Kim Carpenter Drake’s blog www.goaldrivenphilanthropy.com. Kim wrote that in addition to supporting established nonprofits with large numbers of constituents served, corporations and foundations “might be smart to consider the strength of a small group of passionate people with a clear and driven purpose, and see their dollars stretched to accomplish miracles.”

Amazingly, other than myself, we are an all-volunteer organization: from our passionate Board Of Directors to our dedicated coaches to the volunteers at every programs’ twice-weekly practice sessions to the Running Buddies (who encourage an individual girl at her practice and end of season 5k). From our Volunteer Coordinator Kim Holder, who for more than two years now has come home from her very taxing full time job to run background checks on every volunteer to ensure that our girls are safe, to the Percy Priest Elementary mom who drove two girls – not her own – home to Edgehill after practices twice a week so that they could participate in GOTR, to Thomas Nelson Children’s Publicist Jackie Johnston, who started out as a Running Buddy and now serves as Secretary of our BOD and GOTR publicist/Tweeter. She, Board of Directors Chair Jessica Bliss and web master/magician Cherie Pilliod have transformed our newsletters, FACEBOOK page and Web site into virtual works of art. Our organization stands on their creative and technological giant shoulders.

The word is LOVE.

XXOO
Jennifer

*Girls on the Run Nashville has received and is most grateful for the support of the Nashville Striders, Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee, the New Balance Foundation, and the Nashville Predators Foundation.

Jennifer Kimball, Girls on the Run Nashville Council Director, was reading Runner’s World one day when she saw a photo of Girls on the Run founder Molly Barker surrounded by a sea of young girls, all jumping in the air with huge grins on their faces and thought to herself, “I want to do that.” And, with the help of many other interested women (and a few good men), she did. In the fall of 2007 Girls on the Run Nashville began with 15 girls at Percy Priest Elementary and now Jennifer is the one surrounded by the happy faces of 66 girls participating in Fall 2009 programs. Jennifer always has a smile for the girls who she says both surprise, inspire her and make her laugh. Her passion, energy, care, determination and love for the girls and the program is truly contagious.