As the last snow banks melt away, some of Ottawa’s youngest runners will be lacing up their Nikes and taking to the city’s sidewalks and trails for the first time.
This spring marks the Girls on the Run program’s first event in Ottawa and its organizers are expecting more than 50 young athletes to take part in its workshops.
In Ottawa, the workshops will be offered at the Flavor Factory Urban Dance Studio and the Manor Park Community Centre, starting on April 14 and 16, respectively.
The girls work with coaches and mentors in three-hour sessions which, after 10 weeks, culminate in a 5K running event.
Girls on the Run offers coaching to girls aged eight to 13 and aims to build both their running ability and their confidence, and since 2004 it’s grown from 21 girls at one school in Toronto to more than 70 schools and 1,000 runners province-wide.
Dina DeDonato, CEO of Girls on the Run Ontario, says the program aims to help girls before they are put into challenging situations.
“The key to our program is prevention,” she says. “You empower the girls with tools that enable them to deal with bullying situations or at-risk situations.”
Nazareen Elkout, who will be an assistant coach at the Flavor Factory’s workshops, agrees that working with children from a young age is essential.
She heard about the program through word-of-mouth, and was immediately intrigued by the idea, in part because of her own family’s encounters with bullying in schools.
“My kids, over the years, they’ve gone through growing pains,” she says. “So I’ve always wanted to volunteer working with teens.”
Her youngest son was targeted by bullies in high school, and by that age she says it was difficult to help him rebuild a sense of self-esteem. Building that confidence early on is important and part of the reason she thinks Girls on the Run can be so effective.
“It affected not just him, but the entire family,” she says. “But it seemed like it was almost too late, because he was already at that age. If we can help these kids today, from an early age, then they can stand up for themselves.”
DeDonato also stresses the importance of the program’s group setting, which gives girls who may otherwise see themselves as outsiders a chance “to feel part of something bigger than them.”
That’s another element of the program that attracted Elkout, who says the power of that group dynamic is something she sees all the time in Flavor Factory’s dance classes.
“There’s this hubbub among the kids, of teamwork and camaraderie and helping each other,” she says. “That’s what we’re trying to do with this – bringing people together, and giving kids something to be passionate about.”
After this year, DeDonato says that she’s looking to introduce Girls on the Run to different regions of Ontario, and other provinces, and if the warm reception that it’s received so far is any indication, there are plenty of communities willing to participate.
“It’s really been an organic expansion,” she says. “It’s been through wonderful Ottawa citizens who have championed it and brought it to the area. It’s been a slow process, but we want to make sure that we continue to have a quality program.”
At the end of the day, however, she says the girls’ focus is still on the finish line, if perhaps not in a competitive sense.
“We want them to be able to have the confidence to pursue their own goals and to increase their physical activity,” she says. “For a child that might go out for competitive sports, or a child that wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing – they all cross the finish line as athletes.”