A youth club in Southwark organised a fun run to fundraise to help communities connect with their green spaces.
Last weekend families gathered to support those who participated in the run, organised by Step Out.
Phil White, director of Step Out mentoring, said: “The idea of this fun run came from the fact that we want to raise awareness of young people using local parks in the area, so we thought a good way of doing that is by running round the park and getting people to donate money to our charity.”
There had been three types of races going on that day, encouraging people to come and take part in the event as well as supporting their community.
Jessica Moreno Paz, youth mentor at Step Out, said: “We gathered all the families together and were able to get enough people to join in to raise money for what we do at Step Out.”
In the afternoon, three of the mentors embarked on a three hour bike ride through 25 parks in Southwark.
The route was very hilly, but didn’t stop them from carrying on.
Another group of mentors did a small run around Burgess Park to encourage and raise funds for young people to appreciate their local parks.
A mentor who recently joined Step Out said: “I spent a lot of time in parks in Southwark during Covid – it was a very special place to come and get out the house so I have a lot of appreciation for green spaces and I know how important they are for young people.”
For Step Out, they cherish the green spaces because many of their mentoring sessions take place in the parks around where some of the young people live.
The organisers have seen a huge impact in accessing green spaces on isolated young people.
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