When it comes to activism probably the first thing that pops into mind is a bunch of people in the street holding signs and screaming and yelling for a change and when you think about it a road race holds all of those elements.
There has been a movement in the last couple of years in which road race have been popping up all over the country in order to benefit certain things, some support specific cancers, there is even one next Sunday in Ithaca that supports the local 4H club.
Now this may not be the classic way to think of activism but it is still people actively going out and trying to draw awareness and gain support for a specific event. One such event that happened recently was the the Earth Day 5K put on by the Society for Natural Resources Conservation (SNRC) of Cornell University. A 5K is equivalent to running about 3.1 miles and that is exactly what over 150 people ran in the the F.R Newman Arboretum at Cornell university.
At the event President of the SNRC Audrey Stanton talked about what the 5K hopes to accomplish,
“Today is SNRC’s 4th Earth Day 5K. The Earth Day 5K is our celebration, it happens within the Ithaca Community, within the Cornell Community. The purpose is to raise money for great local organization groups.”
One such group was the Cayuga Nature center who had sent their Director of Programs Matt Sacco said that he hopes to give the public a better understanding of nature
“A big part of what we do is teaching people what lives in their own backyards and why this place looks the way it does. There’s a lot of wildlife out here that people have never seen before or have never seen up close,” he said, “that’s one of the things we do at the nature center is teach people about the things that live around us, so that they can make more informed decisions in the future.”
The vice president of SNRC, Gwyndolyn Sofka said that all of the money that is raised will be going towards a good cause,
“All of this money is going to the three organizations here today so the Fingers Lakes Land Trust, Cayuga Nature Center, and Sustainable Tompkins,” she said, “We don’t know what they’re going to do with it but we agree with what their mission statements are and we agree with what they’ve done so far so hopefully they’ll use the money to keep doing what they’re doing.”
Those in charge of the race tried to promote the idea of conservation through several different ways that Stanton listed,
“When we purchased food for the event we started with things that didn’t have wrappers, So we buy bananas and we buy oranges because you can compost the food scraps and then we only purchase things with wrappers when needed and that reduces landfill waste.” She said. “When we do have wrappers we’re able to use terracycle ad so you can recycle those wrappers in that way. To reduce plastic cup waste we encourage people to bring their own water bottle.”
Stanton finished by saying she hopes that people come away from the event having an idea of how great the surrounding area is.
“I hope the main take away for people who come to the race is that they get to see some of the great land we have around here and they get to spend time outdoors with their friends and they get to support local organizations that do great work.”
https://youtu.be/hE5zd4RmHI0
