Run 4 Their Lives 5K Glendora in partnership with Redeeming Love

Run 4 Their Lives is a Freedom 4/24 event that raises awareness and funds to bring sexually exploited women and children into freedom.

In this race we are partnering with Redeeming Love to bring awareness to the Glendora area about human trafficking. 

Redeeming Love is a Christ following, faith-based community. They believe it is their responsibility to fight for the cause of the oppressed and to be agents for their healing. They do this by offering care to the whole person in order to achieve their physical, emotional, mental and spiritual healing.

Here's just a portion of statistics that Redeeming Love has garthered on human trafficking:

On average, traffickers target girls during their most vulnerable stage, between the ages of 12-14. They select girls with vulnerabilities that make them easier to manipulate and control. Many victims have backgrounds that include foster care, abandonment, or homelessness and therefore have little or no familial support structures to return to. Tragically, by the time they are enslaved by their trafficker, over 90% of victims have already been sexually abused at some point in their childhood.

Advocate and Run for FREE

Become a fundraiser! Share information about human trafficking with your friends and family and ask them to support your efforts to run for freedom and fight injustice! Click the Fundraiser tab to set up a personalized R4TL fundraising web page that you can easily email or post on social media - raise $50 and you run free!

Get a Refund By Referring Friends

Refer 1 or more participants and get a refund of up to $20.00. Share your referral code with family and friends and for each of the first FOUR people who register using your referral code, you will receive a $2 refund. For the FIFTH registrant using your code, you are refunded up to $20! So share your referral code and encourage people to come out and run!

Raise Your Arm!

During the R4TL Glendora 2017 run, Harriet and Stella from Uganda and Ivy from LA, all human trafficking survivors, will be highlighted and their names will be written on each participant's arm as a significant act of advocacy and awareness to run for their freedom and the many others with similar stories! If you want to have an even greater impact, begin sharing their stories now through the Raise Your Arm campaign. Read Harriet, Stella, and Ivy's stories and then select one of the following tiers within the Raise Your Arm campaign to help share their stories and fight for freedom!

Harriet’s Story: All of her young life, Harriet’s father and birth mother have had a bad relationship. Harriet lives with her stepmother who does not care about her. Her stepmother did not care when she dropped out of school and she did not care when Harriet was home alone and four boys came over to her house and sexually violated her.

Now Harriet wakes up every day in a severe amount of pain. Each morning, her back aches to the point where she simply cannot sit upright, quite possibly because of her rape.

 A broken family life is one of the leading causes of rape in the world. Harriet is in need of prayer and restoration between her and her family. But Harriet is not alone. Her story is one of millions all across the world. Harriet is only 15 years old and a resident at Christine’s House, Freedom 4/24’s safe home for exploited girls in Gulu, Uganda. There she receives food, housing, education, counseling, and the medical care that she desperately needs. 

Stella's Story: Stella has experienced more trauma in her 12 years on earth than many people will in a lifetime. Her mother has a mental illness and is not able to properly take care of her and her five siblings, and their father is often absent, leaving them vulnerable to many kinds of danger.

For about a month while Stella was traveling to and from school, one of her classmates would find her and rape her. After that month, Stella found out that she was pregnant and the boy who raped her was arrested. However, police only detained him for three days and then released him.

As a result of the pregnancy and her trauma, Stella was forced to drop out of school in March 2015. She is now a resident of Christine’s House, Freedom 4/24’s safe home for exploited girls in Gulu, Uganda, founded in 2012. For $116 a month, Stella is able to call Christine’s House “home” and receive food, education, and medical care, as well as psychological and spiritual counseling. There, she also found a community of support for her delivery of her baby boy, Caleb. 

Ivy's Story: Ivy is a strong, courageous young lady. Raised by a single mother, she was drawn into human trafficking at the age of 19. After surviving two years of that lifestyle, she then spent 7 months behind bars after being labeled as both a victim and a criminal guilty of conspiracy of pandering.  

Now free, she realizes that being incarcerated was the best thing that happened to her. Not only did she come to know Jesus during that time, but her time in jail also gave her time to heal. She is regaining her self-confidence by attending women empowerment courses and regularly seeing a therapist. Ivy is attending school in hopes of becoming a certified beautician. She has also found employment cleaning restaurants and is working hard to grow her client base.

Although free from her trafficker, the road to recovery is long and continually met with fear and doubt. Pray for Ivy to continue to have the support and encouragement she needs to stay on her path toward healing and freedom from trafficking. Pray also against a spirit of depression and discouragement which can be confusing and overwhelming at times. Pray for her to have strength everyday and to remember her eternal worth and the hope that lies before her.

CAMPAIGN DETAILS

TIER 1: For 30 days leading up to your Run 4 Their Lives event, select one of the highlighted survivors of human trafficking and write her name on your arm for each of those 30 days. For each of those 30 days, pray for that woman and others like her, for the end of human trafficking and slavery, and for continued progress in shining light on this darkness. Share your survivor’s story with your family and friends and encourage them to become involved. Share your journey on social media using the hashtags #raiseyourarmchallenge and #freedom424
TIER 2: Along with Tier 1, take the next step and invest in the life of a trafficking survivor by becoming a fundraiser.  What can you do with $24?...5 cups of Starbucks, a tank of gas, a movie and popcorn...For $24, you can provide 1 week of education, 2 weeks of counseling, 3 weeks of housing, 4 weeks of food for a trafficking survivor. Go to the Fundraise tab to become a fundraiser or to donate and again, share your journey on social media using the hashtags #raiseyourarmchallenge and #freedom424.

TIER 3: In addion to Tier 1 and 2, RUN for their lives. Running requires effort and action and may be difficult, uncomfortable, or even painful. Think about the lives of these women and children and how their experiences have been hard and run through your pain. Run for the girl whose name has been on your arm for the last 30 days. AND if you fundraise $50 or more, you can run for FREE!

 

Race Details

Event location: Finkbiner Park, Glendora, CA near the Bandshell

Event Time: The 5K will begin at 8:30am. Race day packet pick and registration will begin at 7:30am and will close at 8:15am. Please arrive by 8:00 am at the latest on race day.  Be sure to get there early to get a parking spot, get prepped to race & visit our sponsor tables! 

Packet Pick Up: Village Fitness (146 N. Glendora Ave. #101 Glendora, CA 91741) from 5:30pm to 8:30pm on Friday, June 2, 2017

Cost: If you choose not to fundraise, the race registration fee is $24 through May 20 ($30 on May 21 until race day). In order to guarantee a race shirt, you will need to register no later than May 24.

Social Media: Share your experience through Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to help spread awareness of human trafficking! Make sure to use #R4TLglendora.