Durban non-profit aims to walk 100km in 10 days to fight back against GBV
Non-profit organisation Trulife has launched a “Weseeyou” campaign to address concerns about gender-based violence, part of which will challenge people to walk or run 100km in 10 days between March 21 and 30.
The message for the campaign, “Run, so they don’t have to”, ties in with the organisation’s vision of making an ongoing effort to challenge, inspire and ultimately empower young people to overcome the social and emotional challenges they face.
Trulife came into existence in 2011, and its project manager and head of communications, Madi Kaletsch, said its Weseeyou campaign, launched in 2022, had been set up to inspire change among South Africans in the way they saw, understood, and responded to gender inequality and gender-based violence in the country.
The challenge was to cover the distance as a team or solo.
Kaletsch said that, through this year’s campaign, they hoped to raise over R600 000 to reach their school quotas, but also to inspire all South Africans – regardless of race, age, culture, religion or gender – to join in the fight against GBV.
“This has weighed heavily on the hearts of our team and closer community, and we wrestled with the question ‘How do we address this issue head-on in schools while still creating a sensitive and engaging environment?’
“This materialised as workshops for primary and high school, but the work had to get out of the office and into the schools – the scale of the project was massive.
“We needed to do something significant and wide-reaching to raise funds and generate buy-in from our fellow South Africans on an issue that is so close to home for so many,” said Kaletsch.
Kaletsch said their aim was to raise funds for Trulife’s GBV awareness programme in schools.
She said this would be done by giving each runner a Backabuddy profile that he or she could use to gather sponsors who could make either a oneoff donation or commit to sponsoring an amount per kilometre completed.
Trulife’s project manager, Nicole Coetzee, echoed Kaletsch’s sentiments and stressed that the initiative was open to people globally too, as long as they ran 100km within the prescribed 10-day period. Whatsapp your views on this story to 071 485 7995