As a running club what can we do to make our world a better place and even do something to help our environment? Let me share a staggering statis-tic. Approximately 1.4 billion people around the world do not own a decent pair of shoes. In addition to this sobering reality, here are two more statistics that are also eye opening:.
In 2011 more than 300 million pairs of shoes will end up in American landfills.

Why have I brought this to our attention? I want to introduce you to a new focus for our club called The Strider Green Initiative, which will be various projects that we as a club will undertake to make our world a better place. The first of these initiatives is an outreach we are naming appropriately,
Think about your closet. If your closet is like mine, then I am certain that there are numerous pairs of shoes lying about, especially the running kind. As runners we log a certain level of mileage on our shoes and then we retire them. To the average eye our shelved running shoes don’t look all that worn. but to someone who has no shoes, they look brand new! So instead of dis-carding our retired shoes, why not give them to people who need them and improve the quality of their life as well as our environment.

Our own Ellen Ringenberger will be our point person for

So what can you do? It‘s really simple. We‘re asking Striders to ‗o green‘ by cleaning out their closets and delivering their retired running shoes to our drop-off location, which will be McKamy Middle School  before our 7:30 am run. If you are unable to bring them on that date, simply contact Ellen at groovedesignser@aol.com and she will work out a time and place to get your shoes.