Anyone who has ever watched a major city marathon has likely noticed that many of the most successful athletes come from East Africa, a region comprised of some of the poorest countries in the world. But how many of us have viewed this disparity as an opportunity for social development? Already several hundred East African youth each year change their lives through running. But what if care was taken to develop the infrastructures within which they run? Impressive efforts have been undertaken by national athletics federations and private sponsors of athletics toward this end. However, facts such as these still remain:

  • Many athletes often chase success in an unstructured and desperate fashion by simply running as hard as possible every 12 hours, sleeping for much of the time in between without consuming adequate refueling diets
  • Athletes lack adequately supportive and protective footwear, recovery-aiding techniques such as showering and massaging, and coaches to monitor and structure their training.
  • Largely as a consequence, many East African athletes see the pursuit of training as a fully-exhausting task, which rules out concurrent pursuit of education or employment.
  • If East Africa if youth earn any profit related to athletics, it is through success as a professional athlete. The ones who fail to succeed due to injury, burnout, or simply lack of talent have no compensation for the  professional sacrifices they have made for their training.
  • International-level sport has the potential to significantly boost local and domestic economies even by developed-world standards. Thousands of jobs in the UK, for example, depend on the country's football industry.

Accordingly, Running Across Borders (RAB) is a non-profit organization that seeks to expand economic opportunities to East African youth through running.

Toward this end we focus on providing opportunities for running, education, and employment.

Our underlying rationale stems from a recognition that economic opportunities created through long-distance running in East Africa could be improved. Economic possibilities through running are often overlooked due to economic disempowerment of local African people best positioned to pursue them. Running represents an industry that could employ people not only as athletes but also people in sports administration, sports tourism, coaching, sports medicine, research and education in the science of athletic performance and in support of social development efforts (such as athletes delivering educational programs on health awareness).  Therefore, in East Africa long-distance running, an extremely promising economic opportunity not only by national but also by international standards, is not capitalized upon with regard to the socioeconomic development of the developing world. Furthermore, opportunities are either minimized or pursued by people based outside of Africa. 

In a time of financial crisis, with the world’s poor hit harder than anyone, the requirement to seek imaginative ways to address such problems is imperative.  In seeking to expand economic opportunites available to East African youth Running Across Borders has several  specific aims.

Specific Aims

The provision of resources to potential world-class competitors will focus on:


The creation of running-related jobs will center around these training camps.  The camp offers us the possibilities of creating employment in sports administration, sports tourism, sport and health science research and teaching, and social development through sport.

The educational training provided will relate to these duties.  To some extent it will be specifically tailored to the duties and goals of the athletes, but basic skills in English as a Second Language (ESL), mathematics, and computer operations will be considered initial pre-requisites for all athletes.  Thus, all athletes will benefit from the transferable nature of this training.

Our Mission
EXPANDING ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITIES TO EAST AFRICAN YOUTH THROUGH RUNNING
Running Across Borders