Good day, runners!
After reading Outside’s article Running Through the Night to Confront the Darkness of Substance Addiction about former FLRC runner Yassine Diboun, our Diversity & Inclusion Committee chair Kris Haines-Sharp was inspired to reach out to Yassine. The D&I Committee had a call with Yassine recently to learn more about his efforts to use running to help those in recovery from substance abuse and to see if there might be a role for a similar program to help people in our area.
To bring together people interested in the intersection of recovery and running and to brainstorm paths forward, FLRC’s D&I Committee is holding a public meeting at 5:30 PM on Monday, March 25, at the Ithaca Friends Meeting House (120 Third Street). We encourage everyone who wants to contribute to join in person, but if you can’t make it, we’ll try to make it a hybrid meeting via Zoom as well.
The meeting will include a brief description of the programs Yassine has developed in Portland and a discussion of how we might replicate something similar here. In particular, we’ll be looking for connections to other organizations in this space, ideas about what we could accomplish, grants and other funding sources, and people to drive the initiatives.
As Yassine says at the end of the Outside article:
“You keep passing it on. You keep giving it away, in order to keep it. Gratitude is a verb.”
Please join us on March 25 at 5:30 PM! RSVP to Kris at diversity@fingerlakesrunners.org to get the Zoom URL for those who have to join remotely and so we can get a head count for the in-person meeting.