Harbus

Issue date: 5/4/09 Section: Sports

On Sunday April 26, 43 HBS students and faculty braved 80-degree weather to run a 10k for Prize4Life. This new initiative, "Run4Life", strived to create a fun and healthy HBS-wide event to raise funds for Prize4Life. In less than three weeks, passionate runners came together from different sections and classes and successfully raised over $3,000. Together with 2:1 matching from generous faculty sponsors, the Run4Life team channelled over $9,000 to Prize4Life.

"During this difficult economic climate, the success these students have had in raising money is nothing short of remarkable," said James Giessler, President of Prize4Life.

Boarding the bus at 9:30 a.m. on Sunday morning, the group was in high spirits. For many of the runners, 10 km (6.3 miles) was a longer distance than they had ever run before. Despite the challenge of heat and distance, everyone had fun along the course. The 10 km James Joyce Ramble featured actors throughout the course who theatrically read readings from various James Joyce novels. Runners could also be found enjoying the occasional water sprinkler supplied by enthused kids along the course.

With the success of this event, I hope Run4Life can become an annual event at HBS and in other cities. Avi [Kremer] has been an inspiration to the HBS community, providing leadership and global impact in his role as Founder and CEO of Prize4Life.

After hearing of the success of Run4Life, Avi responded with an email to the Run4Life runners in which he captured the emotions of the effort: "I don't know what drove you to wake up early on a Sunday and run 10,000 m (that's 4 zeroes!) for someone whom you never met when most people won't take one step for someone they know. There's something so genuine, so pure, so powerful in what you did that to me the big money that came out of it is almost insignificant. You gave something out of yourself for the sake of giving. That's… well…that's almost sacred."

AUTHOR'S BIOGRAPHY
Justin Joffe is an EC student who finished his last HBS class last Tuesday. He is now in Toronto where he is running a Financial Literacy Education start-up company (AME Learning). He is an avid runner and passionate entrepreneur.

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