Doing What You Love While Helping Others: Annual Run Raises Funds For Indigenous Women and Girls

Charity full and half marathons in Canada are popular ways to fundraise for a cause close to your heart. In partnership with Immigration Winnipeg’s Anti-Racism in Sport Campaign, the Manitoba Aboriginal Sports and Recreation Council welcomed more than a hundred participants to a 5K run, walk, or roll for Indigenous women and girls.

This event will raise funds to support sports and recreation programs for Indigenous women and girls in various urban and rural communities across Manitoba and support and empower Indigenous women and girls.

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“This money goes to remove sports barriers to indigenous women and give them opportunities to try different sports activities. This money also will help to connect the indigenous community to MASRC program and then I'm hoping to hire indigenous female leaders to run programs for our demographic”, said Kirkwood, the social development manager for the Manitoba Aboriginal Sports and Recreation Council.

She also added that she feels that the whole purpose of this event is not so much to raise money but to show that there is a community of people who want to support indigenous community members. 

“For me, being on this land today is not the activity we are doing or the workout we are doing to create the atmosphere, it is people shoulder to shoulder in the crowd and awareness why we all came here today,” said Kirkwood.

“It was such a great day, we had around 170 participants. We also had a little rain but it turned out to be a really great day and we are so happy to have everyone here. We hope we can have this run as an annual run to raise funds for programming for indigenous women and girls”, said Daria Palmer, Campaign Project Consultant, Anti-Racism in Sport Campaign. 

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