Itır Erhart, an Assistant Professor at the Media School, a part of Istanbul Bilgi University’s Faculty of Communication, studies a wide range of topics, from sports and social entrepreneurship to human rights, gender and media. But Itır does more than just study these subjects – in 2007, together with five others, she launched the Adım Adım Initiative (‘Step-By-Step Initiative’), which, while not an NGO itself, is an umbrella organization that supports a number of different Turkish NGOs. This initiative – categorized as a charity run in some other countries – is the first of its kind in Turkey. A very diverse group of runners from different nations, age groups, occupations and backgrounds run for the Adım Adım Initiative to raise money and awareness for the NGOs it supports. Moreover, Adım Adım is open to anyone who is willing to participate. I recently had a lovely conversation with Itır about Adım Adım’s story and the process for becoming a runner and, honestly, it convinced me to act even if I’m only a “Rookie” for now.
What is Adım Adım Initiative and how did it all start?
Adım Adım is a charity running group. It’s the very first of its kind in Turkey. We have runners who run and raise money and awareness for NGOs. It started in 2007, when six of us got together. Two of us had already done charity running before, I had done it in the US with Team in Training for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s running group. And Renay was running here, by himself for TOFD (The Spinal Cord Paralytics Association of Turkey). We got together, six of us, six runners, who were eager to start running and fundraising in Turkey. It took about a year to do the focus groups, interviews, to understand how we can adapt something which is very common especially in North America to Turkish culture, because we realised the giving culture in Turkey is very different. There is a disconnection between NGOs and individuals. Companies support NGOs but individuals actually don’t trust NGOs, that’s one of the results of the surveys we conducted. We thought, how can we bridge this gap, how we can make sure people get up, do something and also raise money and awareness for those NGOs. Running almost became a metaphor for that “taking a move on, just getting up and doing something for NGOs”. That year, we started talking to runners around us and convince them to join us to run and raise money for TOFD. That was the first NGO we supported. In 2008, about 48 of us, got together and ran the first charity run in Turkey, in Runtalya which takes place in Antalya and raised about 72.000 TL. That was the very first run. After that it grew. That’s how it started.
How many marathons have the Adım Adım Initiative completed? How much money has been raised so far?
So far, every year we run the Runtalya Marathon in Antalya and Istanbul Marathon which used to be the Avrasya Marathon but now it’s the Vodafone Istanbul Marathon. Those are our two main events and we have completed 12 events to date. Every year we do these main events but small groups of runners do also other events. For example, 10 people are currently planning to go to the Rotterdam Marathon, run there and raise money there for some NGOs. Instead of going to Antalya and running the Runtalya Marathon, they are training for the Rotterdam Marathon and they are doing this with Adım Adım for a particular NGO here. Because we don’t organise these trips, it’s much harder if you’re traveling outside of Turkey.
We have been at this for six years now and so far we have raised about 6.1 million TL. This money has gone to eight NGOs. About 2,000 runners raised these funds, which had a positive impact on the lives of 32,000 people. These could be children, these could be women, it could even be a seed which wasn’t planted before.
How does Adım Adım differ from charity runs in the US?
In the U.S., NGOs themselves have running groups. For example, the AIDS Foundation would have a running group or Leukemia & Lymphomia Society, which I was working for, had a running group. NGOs themselves form their own running groups and everyone who is a member of the group runs for that NGO. What is different for Adım Adım is, Adım Adım itself is not an NGO. It’s an initiative and we want to support as many NGOs as we can. The difference is, Adım Adım is almost like an umbrella under which we have all these Turkish NGOs we’re supporting. Our runners choose which NGOs they want to run and raise money for.
Which NGOs do you work with? Do the volunteers run for all of them?
We work with 8 NGOs. TOFD is one of them. TEGV (Turkish Volunteers for Education) is one, TOG (Volunteers for Society), AKUT (Search & Rescue Association), AÇEV (Foundation for Mother-Child Education), TEMA (The Turkish Foundation for Combating Soil Erosion, for Reforestation and the Protection of Natural Habitats), Koruncuk Foundation, and Buğday Association for Supporting Ecological Living. They all have a different mission. For example, TEGV focuses more on education. TOG focuses on the youth. AÇEV is focused on women who have no access to education. TEMA and Buğday work on nature and environmental issues. The runners can choose any one of these because everyone has different interests and sympathies. If you are more interested in women’s rights issues, you would be more likely to run for AÇEV or if you think youth are neglected in Turkey, you can support one of the projects of TOG.
How does the donation process work?
If you’re running and if you were to pick one of these NGOs, for example AÇEV, you send a message to your friends saying “I’m (your name) and this is gonna be my first race. I want to run for AÇEV.” and then you give them the bank information for AÇEV. Your friends, your family, your colleagues directly make their donations to AÇEV but on the notes part of the transfers, they put down your name. So, we know those donations are coming to you and then AÇEV sends us reports on each and every runner. We can see how many Adım Adım runners are running for AÇEV and how much money they’re raising. You can go thank your donors, AÇEV also prepares certificates that you can send to your donors and thank them.
Even before we start to work with an NGOs, we look at their finances, that’s how we pick the projects – they’re very transparent, they’re very accountable and we know how much money they need and what will be done with the money. So, first, they tell us how much money they expect for this project and then we try to meet those targets. For example, Koruncuk says, we’ll be saving about 300,000 TL from Runtalya and with this money we’ll make sure a certain number of kids are taken care of this year at their village. There’s a very tight control system. The money goes directly to their account. We know how much it costs to educate or to cover the expenses of one child in Koruncuk. Then we look at the money raised and we know that how many kids’ expenses are covered by the Adım Adım runners. Usually each NGO plans a fun event after the races. For example, Koruncuk plans a picnic at one of their villages or Buğday does some other event, etc. The NGO plans a specific event for the people who ran and raised money for them and also gives the certificates to each runner and also each donor. It’s really important to thank your donors.
What about the runner profile of Adım Adım? Is there an age limit?
Runners are for the most part older. Our medium age is around 40. Our runners are mostly mid-level, white-collar Istanbul residents. The ratio of men to women is 50-50. So, it’s really wonderful because usually at running events or sports events you see more men but Adım Adım is really good about that. They’re from very diverse backgrounds. About 90% of the group live in Istanbul. Some of them are living in Ankara, İzmir, Adana, Urfa but they are very few because most of the runs are here in Istanbul. Most of the runners run half marathons and fewer of them run longer races. Some of them had prior running experience but some of them are true beginners. We have the group called Rookies. So if you have never ran before, you can join the Rookies. They start with run-walk training. They walk long distance and they run a little. As time goes by they’re running, it gets longer everyday. When they run their first race, we give them a certificate of graduation. Running can scare some people, that’s why we started the Rookies.
We have some young runners. We have about 10-11 year-old runners too. We have a lot of runners who are over-60 as well. Running is something you can do for a life, if you’re careful and if you make sure you don’t injure yourself.
We have a lot of expats too. The expats who are used to running, come to Istanbul and realise “Oh, where am I gonna run? How am I gonna meet a running community?”. They Google it and Adım Adım shows up. They send us messages and join the runs. We also have a lot of visitors. If they’re training for a race and they’re in Istanbul for some time, again they join. We have a lot of international runners joining us.
How can people be Adım Adım runners?
They can just go to our website www.adimadim.org. There’s a form they need to fill out and once they send it, they’re in. They can follow us on Facebook and Twitter. We also have a Yahoo group. Once they go to the Facebook group they’ll also find out about our Yahoo group. They can become members if they want to and find out about the training times. They can simply join one of the trainings and introduce themselves. We meet every week around 8 am at Levent, we go to the forest. We start running at 8:30 am. Anyone can just come and join the trainings, doesn’t matter if they’re Rookies or others. We have different trainings we do on Saturdays, we do a lot of hill training or speed and trail runs. Rookies start on the trail, 6k, just walking and running. There are different levels of runners, so they just do their own trainings but we all have a breakfast afterwards, eating is the fun part.
We have Dutch trainer, he’s been a volunteer for many years now. He does a mid-level training with most of us. We warm up and he announces the day’s training. It takes around 90 minutes. Another group does something more along the lines of hill training.
What would you like to say to any future volunteers?
The next big race, the Istanbul Marathon, is in November 2014. There’s a really long time to train. Anyone can actually start running and will have enough time to train. Even if they’re rookies. I invite them to come join us! Some people find running difficult especially during the summer but now, it’s a good time to start. Spring is always a good time to start new things.
