Give Running brings together and builds up young people through running and service to support success in life.

We share our love for running and the gifts that running fosters—including wellness, education, and relationships—by organizing volunteer shoe donation campaigns. Specifically, we mentor young leaders as they collect, clean, and donate new and gently used running and athletic shoes to partner nonprofit organizations that are working with young people furthest from opportunity.

Give Running shoes are at times the first footwear young people ever own or don’t have to share with someone else—and the shoe donations are integrated into partner nonprofit organizations’ own programming.

We also guide young leaders and their communities in connecting their personal experiences with running and service to topics such as teamwork, equity, sustainability, and personal best effort. These reflections aim to deepen people’s understanding of the systems that drive inequality and strengthen their commitment to reducing inequality. A run eventually ends and shoes eventually wear out, but the lessons learned and relationships built can create enduring impact.

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Wellness

• Running promotes physical, mental, and emotional health.
• Service increases connectedness, sense of agency, and sense of belonging.
• Proper footwear can prevent life-threatening diseases such as podoconiosis, hookworm, ascaris, and trichuriasis.

Education

• Shoes are essential for education access because students in most countries must wear shoes in order to attend school.
• The health benefits and dignity of proper footwear also contribute to students’ ability to attend school consistently.
• Research shows that service learning, such as participating in shoe donation campaigns, has a positive effect on students.

Sustainability

• Running connects people to nature and can foster a devotion to protecting the natural world.
• We extend the life of shoes in good condition.
• We recycle shoes in poor condition through programs like Nike Grind, which recycle the rubber, foam, and fabric in old shoes into part of the necessary materials for constructing all-weather running tracks, synthetic fields, courts, and playgrounds.

Relationships

• We remove financial barriers to participation in running and other activities that require running or athletic shoes.
• Each pair of Give Running shoes connects a pair of lives: While the giver and receiver of each pair of shoes may not meet face-to-face, they nevertheless meet foot-to-foot and heart-to-heart.