Looking Back on 2020 and Forward to 2021

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On behalf of the entire Free to Run team, we want to wish you a healthy and happy new year! We’re all looking forward to a better year. That said, while the past 12 months were certainly tough, our staff and participants proved they are even tougher. Free to Run ended 2020 with some of the best ‘wins’ we’ve had since the organization was founded. At the top of the list was learning how to adapt our programs to respond to the urgent and changing needs of our participants and staff during the global pandemic.

The women and girls in Free to Run’s programs include some of the most vulnerable members of society including internally displaced persons, refugees, and persons with disabilities. During this COVID-19 pandemic, the lockdown measures, economic crises and other high stress conditions have increased their risk of being forced into early marriage or subjected to other forms of gender-based violence in the home. We remain as committed as ever to serving women and girls in Afghanistan and Iraq. No matter how long it takes to roll-out the vaccine in both regions, we will keep moving forward.

We’d like to take this opportunity to share some of our highlights and give you a preview of what’s to come in 2021. 

Recapping 2020

In 2020, Free to Run supported almost 500 women and girls from eight different ethnic backgrounds in Afghanistan and Iraq, which consisted of approximately 700 sports sessions, 430 education sessions, more than 20 volunteering sessions, and six community outreach events! 

In Afghanistan, prior to the onset of the pandemic, we hosted our annual Winter Inter-Regional Sports & Leadership Week in early 2020, where participants from five different regions across the country came together to learn how to ice skate and ski in the Central Highlands. Some of you may remember that Free to Run was responsible for building Afghanistan’s first ice skating rink in 2016. Hosting this winter sporting event for the fourth year felt even more special because our newest regional program participants from Southern Afghanistan - one of the most conservative areas of the country - were able to join us. Together, the participants broke down ethnic and social barriers that often sow division amongst Afghans. 

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“When I go home, I’ll talk about the culture I learned about in other provinces from my teammates here.” - Southern Afghanistan participant

In Iraq, we started out the year with an exciting announcement: we were recognized as one of the world’s most disruptive girl-led organizations, which won us a prestigious With and For Girls Award! Free to Run and 25 other ground-breaking grassroots organizations from around the world were invited to London to share knowledge and spark action.  

Pandemic response

As an organization, the pandemic demanded we take immediate action to respond to the crisis and financial impact of such an extraordinary event to ensure we’d be ready to see our staff and participants through it. The lockdowns in urban centres were necessary to try to contain the spread and transmission of the virus, but contributed to further isolation of Iraqi and Afghan women and girls, exacerbating their vulnerability.  

During the height of the lockdowns, our Program Officers and Coaches called participants to share at-home workouts for them and their families while staff continued to do mental health and family health check-ins to provide them with a critical lifeline.

“Virtual programs make it so I don't forget to get up early in the morning. They prevent me from getting tired of being at home all day.” -Central Highlands participant

As lockdowns eased, we were faced with the difficulty of developing a hybrid model to deliver programming safely and implement new standards of procedure to keep participants healthy. With necessary measures in place, we cautiously returned to small group, distanced, in-person programming.

“My family did not allow me to do sports initially. When I joined Free to Run’s virtual program and played the games with my family, I talked with them about the life lessons - they grew to like it. Now they’ve given me this opportunity to run and do sport!” Northern Afghanistan participant

The Iraq participants were able to return to runs, hikes, and cycling sessions in small groups within displacement camps and communities. While the participants missed their other teammates, they were thrilled to take their first trips out of the camps in nearly five months. 

In Afghanistan, we used our network of local teachers, partner organizations, and government departments to recruit new teams for a hybrid delivery of our Life Skills through Sports (LSS) curriculum. Through in-person and virtual sessions in small groups, participants developed their communication, conflict resolution, and leadership skills.

“I was so unhappy today because of an explosion. But when I had the LSS lesson, doing the games made me feel happier and relaxed. So thank you,  Free To Run!” -Kabul participant

We also innovated ways to reach more participants and alumni. We developed an activity book containing leadership development exercises, family workout options, and alumni stories among other things. These activity books will remain an important part of our program for years to come, as they will be distributed to teams as they graduate from our programs so that they always have access to a Free to Run resource at home.

Silver linings

With all major fundraising events and races cancelled, we decided to host a virtual marathon for not only our participants but also our global community. Our first virtual race was an amazing success: 50 international runners ran alongside 100 participants and managed to raise over US$8,500 for our programs!

In December, Free to Run won the 2020 Beyond Sport Global Award for Peace & Social Justice. Additionally, Shaimaa, one of our Iraq coaches, was awarded the Beyond Sport Courageous Use of Sport award! The awards provided great encouragement to staff after a long, tough year of interrupted and adapted programming. If you haven’t seen the latest edition of TIME Magazine, Shaimaa was featured in a piece about the activists of the Middle East who are promoting change in the region - check it out! 

Looking forward

While 2021 starts off in similar pandemic circumstances, we’re launching a new project called Community Coaches. This project development program is geared towards our alumni who have already volunteered as Community Development Leaders in our Afghanistan high school programs and will equip them with the tools they need to identify and encourage communities of women and girls in their own neighborhoods. These 25 alumni will design their own interventions and work on their community mobilization skills to increase the number of women and girls reached by our programs.

When it comes to races and other group sporting events, we remain cautiously optimistic. We’re counting the seconds until we can host our next Inter-regional Sports & Leadership Weeks or provide our participants with the opportunity to race in the Marathon of Afghanistan and RacingThePlanet! That said, we know that it will take a long time to get vaccines into regions like Afghanistan and Iraq, and we will always prioritize the health and safety of our participants and staff. 

Working off well-tested methods, we’ve developed a risk assessment model that will enable us to take all of the latest data and assess the risks of each situation as it arrives. This is not unfamiliar territory for Free to Run, but with situations changing at such high speed, it helps all of our staff to be very consistent in how we run programs, or participate in races, throughout 2021. 

Finally, we would like to thank the entire Free to Run community for your incredible support. The generosity that was displayed during our end-of-year fundraising was extraordinary. We surpassed all expectations and exceeded our US$20,000 goal! Like all of you, we’re looking forward to this year with a mixture of optimism and realism; optimism for the impact we will have and realism about the challenges ahead of us.

One foot in front of the other…this is how every race is won. 

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Free to Run Wins 2020 Beyond Sport Global Award