Right to Run partner: The Outrunners
‘Our programs are designed to connect people. We can be a connecting force’
In 2015, Tyler Williams-Green took it upon himself to create an inspirational running club, The Outrunners, based in England’s capital, London. With a background in youth work and run coaching, Tyler’s goal was to build a community of local runners from all walks of life, who were willing to use the sport as a tool to engage with the suburb’s young people. As The Outrunners running club grew from just two runners to a group of 15, Tyler found his many of his attendees wanted to do as much as possible to enrich their community. Over the years that followed, this running club grew into a collection of committed volunteers, willing to share their life wisdom and career knowledge with the local young people.
The idea behind The Outrunners came from two ’gesture runs’. A few of us bought tinned food from a local supermarket in Hackney, east London and ran it to a nearby food bank as a goodwill gesture. I wanted to do more than offer the odd donation, so I decided to use my background in youth work to start a permanent program for young people in our local area. The Outrunners allows our runners to become a volunteer to coach local young people in both running and career advice.
We offer three programs: Run Your Career, Outrunners Youth and a social mentoring program. Run Your Career began with a community event held in a local sports store. Professionals from different companies came to speak to the kids about how they got into those jobs. The event was so successful in connecting our young people with inspiring employees, we made it into a program. We are able to build local business connections, which provides our young people with access to work experience and employment opportunities.
The Outrunners Youth program encourages young people between the ages of eight and 16 to take part in light-hearted games such as stuck in the mud and relay races. We organize weekly meet ups, and encourage them to join races like the Hackney School Run and The Big Mile. Our third program focuses on mentoring. We match a young person who is finding the last year of primary school challenging, with one of our runners who has been through a mentor training program with us.
About 200 young people engaged in our programs last year, and we ’ve created different pods of youth running clubs around Hackney. The running clubs are created with the input of young women of colour. Through talking to the young people we work with, we understood that when young women hit puberty, they tend to disengage from physical exercise due to not having adequate equipment, feeling sexualized or having other negative experiences. So, this teen-focused running club is set up with their needs, and safety, in mind.
The suburb of London in which we work, Hackney, has a lot of opportunity, but there is also a lot of social deprivation. It’s a borough where someone can live in a £5 million townhouse, right behind a housing estate where a family of five share a two-bedroom flat. We have these two cross-sections of society that live in the same area, but they need to be connected. The Outrunners programs are designed to connect people within a community. We can be a connecting force. For us, that could mean encouraging our runners to help raise money to fund our youth programs. Or it could mean connecting a young mentee with an inspirational mentor, or introducing a young person to an aspirational company whose employees can offer work experience or industry advice.
The most rewarding thing about The Outrunners is seeing longevity in our work, especially through the Run Your Career program. We have a young person who has just received a paid internship, and we have a few people who did a film and acting mentorship with our volunteers and then got accepted into the BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology. We live in an area that is full of diverse industries, so we have access to amazing illustrators, people who work in film, and artists. Our young people can learn so much from them. Some of our teenagers even ask to come back and work with the younger Outrunners. That’s fantastic to see.
Find out more about The Outrunners.
Discover Right to Run
Running. Most of us think it comes easily. But the truth is, there are countless barriers that stop people from running. That's why we're launching a new social impact partnerships program supporting and amplifying the work that local communities are doing to drive change. Because everybody has the Right to Run.
