“I would not be the person I am without running,” says Maya Mor, the Founder and Executive Director of Girls Run Global, a nonprofit that works with young girls to teach life skills through running. Girls Run Global currently works with Secondary Education for Girls’ Advancement (SEGA), a girls’ secondary school in Morogoro, Tanzania, providing mentorship, running gear, and programming to students.
The path to creating Girls Run Global and working with the students of a secondary school in Tanzania follows two threads: sport and gender equality. Even from a young age as an avid soccer player, the inequality in sports bothered Maya. As a third grader, Maya was writing about why the U.S. women’s national soccer team should be playing on real grass just like the men’s team rather than turf.
Maya would eventually go on to run track and cross country during high school, but due to ongoing injuries, she took a gap year after graduation. After deciding to take the gap year, Maya considered going to Sub-Saharan Africa to travel and wanted to find a volunteering opportunity for when she was there. What she did instead was start her own nonprofit.
“Finding something that excites you is empowering in its own right,” says Maya. And while there are nonprofits that teach STEM or English in Sub-Saharan Africa, her passion has always been running, so “I had this idea, and I just ran with it,” quips Maya.
Maya started reaching out to local schools with a general idea of providing running gear and leading a girls’ running camp. Soon, she realized she wanted to take things further by creating an official nonprofit devoted to empowering girls through running.
In May of last year, Girls Run Global’s first running program launched at SEGA, an all-girls secondary school funded by the US nonprofit Nurturing Minds. The school brings in girls on scholarship from around Tanzania.
The 2024 in-person program worked with some 70 students ages 13-19 to lay the foundations for a sustained girls’ running group at the school. Students’ own interest in running was key. The sport was not forced on students but used as a vehicle for personal growth. “Our goal isn’t to turn girls into Olympians, but to use sport as a tool for girls to develop skills that better enable them to achieve their goals,” says Maya.
Girls Run Global brought out kits with running equipment for each of the SEGA student runners with items like running shoes and sports bras. The organization also works to mentor students both from within the school and beyond. Guest speakers like three-time Olympian Diane Nukuri, who ran for Burundi, worked with students to showcase the impact running can have. “You’ve gotta see it to believe you can do it,” says Maya.
With the second year of in-person programming scheduled for the summer of 2025, the Girls Run Global team will work with 64 new runners at SEGA. Maya hopes that some of the older students involved in the program will help newer students.
Despite the nonprofit’s work, Maya credits the SEGA staff: “Any success we have in the future will be because of the faculty there.”
While the program started in Tanzania, the nonprofit’s model has global ambitions. Girls Run Global is actively working to expand to other schools in Latin America. As they focus on growing the program, Girls Run Global is working to live up to its name’s ambition and leverage the power running across the globe.
Learn more: https://www.girlsrunglobal.org/
Finding something that excites you is empowering in its own right. I had this idea, and I just ran with it.