She Runs

She Runs – Active Girls’ Lead was a one-year project which flagship event took place in Paris, the week after the International Women Days, from March 11th to 16th. It aimed at promoting physical practices among young women, and sport as a tool for girls’ empowerment. The week was articulated around one symbolic run on March 13th on the bank of the Seine river gathering 3000 girls aged 15-18 (2500 local French participants and 500 participants from international delegations). Throughout the week, these 400 international girls (with their 100 adults “mentors”) coming from 24 Erasmus+ programme countries and additional 9 countries (invited by the ISF) took part in a multi-dimension programme including sports, culture, education and innovation, while stressing the potential of sport in addressing gender equality.Before the event, a large promotion campaign was conducted with several sport and political ambassadors joining their voice to the key messages of the projects. Young participants were selected within their national school sport entities and contributed to the promotion of the event by sending in short presentation and motivation videos, thus setting the milestone of a solid network of young women leaders in the European world of school sport. During the week, the multicultural group was hosted in Paris and enjoyed several activities beyond the symbolic short run (about 3kms) along the Seine River together with 2500 local French participants. They started with a Scavenger Hunt throughout the city divided into intercultural groups to explore the history of women and sport of the host city (March 12th). They discovered new physical activities on the She Runs Village (March 13th) including boxing, roller, yoga, steps, double Dutch, rowing, dancing, etc. and interacted with the other local French participants through sport and cultural activities. They got to meet and were inspired by 4 role models during a talk conference (March 14th) involving Laurence Fischer World Karate Champion and new French Ambassador of Sports, Birgitta Kervinen winner of the IOC Women in Sport World Trophy Award 2017, Valentina Marchei Olympic figure skater, and Paula Radcliffe Marathon Record Holder. Finally, a smaller group of selected 40 participants from 20 Erasmus+ programme countries took part in one and a half day of training using the Design Sprint methodology. Involving their mentor as local supports, they designed and shaped sport activities to be implemented in their communities. Initially, it was planned that we organise additional sub locals’ activities in the countries of the girls who participated in the Design Sprint. However, the reality of the field made this complicated. Therefore the ISF decided that the it will be as better and interesting in term of pure empowerment to let the group of girls who participated in the design sprint activities, to run by themselves their own local project in their countries and that they will follow up with the ISF organiser all along the year until the end of the She Runs project. The ISF decided to award the group of girls who led their project until the end and having the recommended impact by proposing them to participate in the final Institutional She Runs conference.