The 2nd Annual Golden Shoe Awards

Randall Mark and Ken Baerg: Community Leaders

By Michelle Watrin

Temeka’s eyes were full of joy. The nine-year-old girl living in Amedo, Ethiopia took one look at the new gravity-driven water system being turned on for the first time in her village and exclaimed, “Now I can go to school!” She was talking through an interpreter to Run for Water’s Randall Mark about the changes this would mean for her life. Before the water tap, girls as young as seven were expected to make the daily 20-kilometre trek up and down a mountain to a natural spring to carry water back to their families. Suddenly, the amazing smile faded from Temeka’s face, and she turned away from Mark and whispered something.

“What? What did she say?” Mark asked the interpreter.

“You really want to know?”

“Yes, I do,” Mark said.

“She said, ‘Tell him I’m happy because I don’t have to go into the jungle anymore so I won’t get raped again.'” The interpreter explained that men from nearby villages would often wait for the girls as they made their daily hike for water. Family survival forced the girls to take this risk every day, even with their families knowing about the possibility of rape, molestation and kidnapping. Temeka’s village had no police or military within hundreds of kilometres. Mark, who has four young daughters of his own, could not hold back his emotion, and through tears he bent down to look into Temeka’s eyes. “I am happy too,” he said to her. Suddenly, Abbotsford, B.C.’s Run for Water was not just about providing clean water to forgotten villages in the southern mountains of Ethiopia.

In a Starbucks back in August 2007, Ken Baerg had shared an ambitious vision with Mark, a TV talk show host and Baerg’s friend and running buddy. Baerg wanted to establish a high-quality 5K, 10K and half-marathon wrapped in a fun, community event for the people of B.C.’s Lower Mainland. The run would also raise funds for Hope International, an organization with developmental projects all over the world, one of which was establishing clean water in Ethiopian villages. “Without the fundamentals – clean water, food and shelter, there is no hope to pull out of the cycle of poverty and premature death for many of these people,” Baerg, an expert in labour relations, says. “Access to water is foundational to health and the ability to start to become economically sustainable.”

Knowing Ethiopia well, Mark was captivated by the idea. His parents had been missionaries there when Mark was a teenager. “Part of my childhood was spent in Ethiopia. The people there are tattooed on my heart, and I still have vivid images of handing out food to many children that seemed more like starving birds than kids,” Mark says. “I jumped at the chance to help them.”

Before long, the two put together a group of more friends and local running enthusiasts with various talents to help out. Key sponsors joined the team, and the Run for Water was born. On June 1, 2008, more than 700 runners and walkers participated in the first event, and they raised $20,000 for Hope International. On May 31, 2009, those numbers more than tripled in the second annual event with 1,700 participants raising more than $90,000. The race is now one of the fastest growing running events in B.C. Envision Financial came on board in 2009 to be the title sponsor of the event, and a teaching program on Ethiopia’s water needs was implemented into classrooms around the Fraser Valley. Students create a project about the cause, fundraise for the event and then participate in the run.

In November 2008, Baerg and Mark accepted an invitation to some villages in Africa with Hope International, where they saw first-hand how the funds from the race were being used. That’s where Mark met nine-year-old Temeka. “We connected with the people on a very human level,” Baerg says. “We moved from a statistical reality – every 15 seconds someone dies in the world because of a lack of clean water – to the reality of kids with mothers and fathers who love them like we love our kids, who cannot provide and who too often watch one another perish for reasons that are ultimately preventable.”

Baerg, Mark and the dedicated board of volunteers have vowed to continue the event to raise more funds to help the people, especially young girls, in remote areas of Ethiopia. The 2010 Run for Water takes place on May 30, with a sister run being planned in Burlington, Ont.