4760 Red Bank Rd. Ste 218
Cincinnati, OH 45227
Fall 2020/Spring 2021 Girls on the Run Scholarships
Girls on the Run inspires girls to be joyful, healthy and confident using a fun, experience-based curriculum which creatively integrates running. Girls on the Run is a physical activity-based positive youth development (PYD) program that is designed to enhance girls’ social, psychological and physical skills and behaviors to successfully navigate life experiences. The intentional curriculum – delivered by trained, volunteer coaches – places an emphasis on developing competence, confidence, connection, character, caring, and contribution in young girls through lessons that incorporate running.
The program inspires girls to build lives of purpose and to make meaningful contributions to community and society. As such, each team creates and executes a community service project. The season ends with a celebratory 5K event. Completing a 5K gives the girls a tangible sense of achievement as well as a framework for setting and achieving life goals.
Established in 2005, Girls on the Run Greater Cincinnati has served over 15,000 girls throughout the 12-county region. Many of the girls lack the financial resources to pay for the program, and grants such as the Dater Foundation grant help bridge that gap so that all girls wishing to participate may join the program.
The challenges of 2020 significantly impacted programming. The strong curriculum is the number one asset, and as an organization Girls on the Run quickly adapted to provide a hybrid in-person/virtual program so that girls would not have to miss a lesson if school was canceled or they had to suddenly quarantine. In a year when so much has been taken from kids, providing them some consistent support has meant everything. Attendance was extremely high for teams, and even the completely virtual teams reported a surprisingly high level of engagement. Covid-19 has been named an adverse child experience (or ACE), signaling that there is trauma affecting all our kids right now. One of the most consistent factors to counteract the ACE score is support from an adult through social-emotional learning. GOTR has been able to fill the gap to provide this essential programming for girls in the region to help them process all of the unexpected events of this year.
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