From traffic-clogged streets of Beijing to ghost towns of Siberia and eventually through the streets of Baltimore, athletes are running across the world with a message: Water is life.
“By and large, all of us [in America] have access to safe water, so it?s hard for people to understand some people don?t have it,” said Simon Isaacs, one of the runners participating in the Blue Planet Run.
The Blue Planet Run is a 95-day global relay across 16 countries to raise awareness and money for safe drinking water projects. The runners are scheduled to come through Baltimore on Aug. 31 carrying a baton inscribed with the words “Water is life.”
The event started June 1.
The athletes, from 13 countries, run 10-mile shifts nonstop. When they?re not running, they are talking with people about the need to fund projects to provide safe drinking water to the more than 1 billion people in need.
“We can talk about awareness raising, but it boils down to [getting] money on the ground for projects,” said Isaacs, a Boston native who lives in Rwanda.
The long-term goal is to provide safe water to 200 million people by 2027, said Jin Zidell, founder of the Blue Planet Run Foundation, which is based in Mill Valley, Calif.
The Dow Chemical Co. is sponsoring the run, so all donations go to directly to the goal, he said.
So far, the foundation has funded 135 water projects, such as wells and rainwater collectors, in 13 countries.
“For safe drinking water, we do not have to invent anything new,” Zidell said. “It?s really a matter of a commitment to do it.”
Communities must be able to sustain the safe water solutions they are provided, said Christine Moe, a safe water and sanitation professor at Emory University in Atlanta. So a gasoline-powered pump can?t be used in a developing country that can?t afford the fuel.
“Communities need to know how to manage and support their systems,” she said.
