Why don’t we exercise more? Probably for the same reason we don’t volunteer often enough — there’s not enough time in the day. But what if you could knock out both at once?
Thanks to the new non-profit The Good Gym, do-gooding joggers in London‘s Tower Hamlets neighborhood can get their bodies and their souls fit at the same time.
Volunteer runners sign up and are assigned to elderly, immobile partners. Joggers make their way to their elderly “coach’s” home, drop off a newspaper or some fruit, chat for a few minutes and run back home. So far, there have been about 450 “good” runs.
There’s proof that what they’re doing is vital to their community; the Good Gym cites research showing that 13 percent of people in the UK over age 65 say they’re always or often lonely, and 17 percent see family and friends less than once a week. Don’t worry, before being assigned to a partner, a runner has to undergo a background check.
Mark Herbert, The Good Gym’s project manager, shared one story that he found especially touching. “When one of our coaches had to go to hospital, the runner changed her running route to visit him there instead of at his home. She continued to drop by to visit him at the hospital every week for the duration of his stay, and she was the only person to visit him in three weeks.”
The Good Gym is also branching out into other projects and, hopefully soon, other areas of the country and into the US.
On a recent group run, more than a dozens participants helped prepare a rooftop garden. Not only were they jogging, but they lugged 60 giant bags of compost up the stairs of a local school.
For more, watch the story of runner Rebecca and her coach Elizabeth from BBC, and then start stretching.
Photo 1 by Ed Yourdon via Flickr, 2 courtesy of The Good Gym.