By Kayla Nolan at Girls Gotta Run Foundation

We are excited to partner again with Oiselle to celebrate the International Day of the Girl! This year we’re organizing a global pop-up 5K event to raise awareness and funds for girls who are empowering themselves and their communities through running and education in Ethiopia.

Girls Gotta Run Foundation (GGRF) is the only non-profit organization in Ethiopia using the national sport of running as an innovative approach to creating safe spaces, ending child marriage and expanding access to secondary school for vulnerable girls. We’re excited to invite Oiselle supporters around the globe to team up with us by running a 5K with their friends to support girl runners in Ethiopia in a tangible and meaningful way. We hope you’ll join us! Here’s how...

1. Register. Grab two (or more) of your friends and register for the IDG Pop-Up 5K event by contributing $25 each towards providing Athletic Scholarships for girls in Ethiopia. Donate to register.
2. Run. Run a 5K with your friends on Sunday, October 11th, the International Day of the Girl, and celebrate strong girls globally.
3. Share. Share photos of your squad running the 5K and enter to win some free swag with hashtag #IDG5K. (Join the conversation with #GirlsGottaRun and #GlobalGirlSquad)

The birds at Oiselle HQ will be gathering at the Oiselle Store to run a 5K+ during the regularly scheduled long run at 7:30am. All runners invited for the 5K distance and more. 

Good luck runners! 

Looking for more ways to get invovled with GGRF? 
The GGRF Athletic Scholarship is a 3 year program that provides girls with scholarships to attend school, to complete our extracurricular life skills, mentoring, leadership and entrepreneurial courses, and to participate on the GGRF running team. Each Athletic Scholar receives the following:

• Full scholarship to attend secondary school, including healthcare for student and her mom, daily meals, uniform, books, tutoring, access to school clubs and library, showers and space to wash clothes on the weekend.
• Completion of the GGRF/Center for Creative Leadership Life Skills Curriculum developed to create safe spaces for girls and provide experiential learning modules on family planning, financial literacy, HIV/AIDS awareness, nutrition, healthy relationships, leadership, and creative expression.
• Running clothes, shoes and healthy snacks for the year
• Entrance and transportation to Ethiopian races throughout the year
• Oversight of a coach and running mentor

At present we work with 55 girls in 5th – 8th grades running in two different athletic teams, one with 35 girls at the Abba Pascal Girls School in Sodo, Ethiopia and one with 20 girls being implemented this Fall with a public school in Bekoji, Ethiopia.

The teams meet three times a week (Monday, Thursday and Saturday) after school and in the morning on Saturday. During the school week, girls attend class, attend the 60-90 minute long practice after school and receive a snack. On Saturday, the girls meet for two hours in the morning. One hour is spent doing athletic training and the second hour is spent eating a meal as a team and conducting the life skills workshop for the week.

GGRF Athletic Scholars complete the GGRF/Center for Creative Leadership life-skills program after one school year and continue to be scholarship recipients for the remaining two years. In the second year of programming, GGRF Athletic Scholars complete leadership and peer education workshops and in the final year of the scholarship, GGRF Athletic Scholars and their families complete business and financial literacy trainings to help them start or enhance their own business which enables them to support themselves after graduating from the GGRF Program.

E-mail Kayla Nolan for more information on how to become an Athletic Scholarship Sponsor or get more involved with GGRF: kayla@girlsgottarun.org.