The Start Line Approaches - 2010 Race & Festival for World Peace

Now's the time to make up your mind - what are you doing this weekend for world peace? Here's your options:

1> If you live in the greater Washington, DC area - sign up at www.raceforworldpeace.org/ and meet up at 20th & Pennsylvania Avenue on Saturday by 9am for the start of our 5K run/walk through the Foggy Bottom neighborhood. In addition to cash prizes for runners, we have an array of free giveaways for runners/walkers during the post race awards ceremony and through out the cultural festival that follows.

(Live in DC but you are out of town this weekend? No worries. Sign up anyway and we'll count your registration as a donation and support for our cause. You do like world peace, don't you?)

2> If you don't live in the WDC metro area, host your own event. You don't need police barriers and permits. You need one or more friends. Pick a meeting point near your house and walk (or run) on Saturday. If you register your "virtual race" with the Sister Cities International office ahead of time, we'll send your group free race t-shirts. Contact our race director, Anna Valero, to register your hometown run/walk.

Congratulations to Fort Worth, Texas; Accra, Ghana; Casablanca, Morocco; and Stuttgrat, Germany - all of whom are hosting virtual races. Let us know if you are on-board!

3> Jogging isn't your thing? That's fine, do you like sitting? C'mon by for our FREE FESTIVAL from 10am-2pm at 20th & Pennsylvania Avenue for a mix of music, dance, and spoken word, as well as cultural booths, food, and fun kids activities.

So,what are you doing this weekend for world peace?

Mark Your Calendar: Race & Festival for World Peace – October 23, 2010

Strap up your running shoes and get training. In connection with UN Day and UN Week celebrations in Washington, DC, Sister Cities International will host its second Race & Festival for World Peace this fall on Saturday morning, October 23 in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood.

Will you join us in DC? Will you host your own walk or run in your town? It’s not too hard to grab a few friends passionate about the world and go for a walk. Let us know about it (and send a picture or two!) and we’ll make a big deal of your efforts! Find out more at www.raceforworldpeace.org.

And We're Off! Race for World Peace (part 3)

A visual post from our Festival - enjoy the array of photos. I couldn't squeeze in all 12 performances. But we have a little something from the eight cultures/countries represented.

Many thanks to our major sponsors Collective Media, The Hill, and BP, as well as all of our in-kind donors. Without their help our event could not have been a success.

   Our African drummers thundered Pennsylvania Avenue

     Modern Dance

     Traditional Indian Dance

      Ukranian wedding dance

     DJ Undadog with World Beats

    Clowns and Henna tatoo artists

Jugglers and face painters

      Flamenco energy warmed up the audience

   

   By the end of the festival, the Bolivian dancers had us jumping

And We're Off! Race(s) for World Peace (part 2)

While we were busy squaring away our event in during dark morning hours in Washington, DC, our 1st Race for World Peace was busy 'going global.'

Illinois & France's Race Exchange

The Palatine (IL) Sister Cities program hosted it's own mini-walk locally. Members of Palatine Sister Cities braved the cold and the rain to take a an architectural tour in downtown Palatine. The walk, created by Marg Duer, gave historical information about past owners of homes. At the end of the tour, the group enjoyed an inside tour of a home over 100 years old, which took 20+ years to renovate by the current owners. The walk concluded at Palatine’s farmers market, with hot coffee, fresh baguettes and French butter.

Earlier that day, Palatine’s sister city in France (Fontenay-le-Comte) took a walk in their own downtown, where the buildings are much, much older but shared a similar day of cold weather.

With the economy in its present state, it is difficult for Palatine and Fontenay to schedule an exchange, so this sister city partnership opted to “share something together” through the mutual event without being on the same continent.

(Thanks to Sue Minott for her reporting on these events.)

Fort Worth, Texas
(As reported from one of the Fort Worth participants)

It’s very dark, and very cold at 6am in Ft. Worth in October. That was check-in time for Team Texas at our satellite Sister Cities Race for World Peace. The race course wound along the Trinity River in a park in downtown Ft. Worth - we ran by a sign for geese crossing, underneath a beautiful canopy of trees and past a statue of Mark Twain reading in the park – a far cry from the city course in Washington, but that’s the way we roll in Texas!

We had lots of energy (for being as early as it was, and for the lack of caffeine prior to the race) and managed to get the crowd involved, so much so that along the course, and the turn we had runners as well as several of the course marshals chanting “Go Sister Cities! Go World Peace!” It was a great experience, and it was fun to participate, even remotely, with the amazing efforts that took place in Washington DC!

Cluj, Romania
A small but hearty group of citizen diplomats (of all ages!) in the third largest city in Romania took to the streets and mountains in their efforts to spread the word of world peace.

Thank you to each of the local sister cities programs that organized a satellite race/walk in conjunction with Sister Cities International. Bravo!

Add your hometown to our list of host cities for 2010 - email us and we'll tell you how easy it is.


Many thanks to our major sponsors of the event: Collective Media, The Hill, and BP, as well as all of in-kind donors,

And We're Off! 1st Race & Festival for World Peace (part 1)

I'm out of breath and so is the staff. Two weeks ago, we hosted the Sister Cities Leadership meetings in DC and last weekend, the Race. Gladly I can say, both were a rousing success.

Anytime you host a first time event it is - how can one say this politely - a learning experience. The staff "learned" quite a bit about how to navigate the DC city government to get all of the appropriate event permits. We learned how to correctly hold an 8oz cup of water for runners whirling by a water station. We even learned that there are such people as grouchy balloon artists. But most importantly - we had a lot of fun getting to our finish line, which was Race Day.
The festival stage set-up started at the pre-dawn hour of 3am. The Pennsylvania Avenue transformation started. By 7am, the staff had the registration and information tents ready and sponsor banners were lightly flapping in the breeze.
As 9am approached the police appeared en masse, the roads closed, and the course marshalls were in place. With over 500 runners/walkers registered from 17 states and DC, folks hurried to find their place for the start. At this moment, all the open-ended questions I had thought about for nine months ran through my head: would the runners like the course, will people show up for the festival, are the first festival performers here, do we have enough port-a-johns, will the rain hold-off to name a few. As I stood about 50 yards down from the Start Line, it was definitely a thrill to have the participants rush by as the event got underway.
I should note that despite the 90% chance of rain forecast the evening before, we happily enjoyed overcast skies and 65 degree temperatures for the whole event (with the exception of a brief 5-minute shower at the start of the festival.)

Just 15 minutes later, it was all over - sort of. At least for the quickest male athlete, Demesse Tefera was the first winner of the Race for World Peace with a time of 15:10. The top female runner appeared shortly thereafter. Hirut Mandefro took the top female prize with a time of 17:04. Supporting family members and friends created a human channel of cheers and applause that stretched from the Finish Line about 100 yards out.
Over the next hour we encouraged, hooted, and prodded our participants on to the Finish Line. (Official timings.) On to the awards ceremony and the festival!

Many thanks to our major sponsors of the event: Collective Media, The Hill, and BP, as well as all of in-kind donors,

(Stay tuned to this space for a series of perspectives on the race, our festival, and the four virtual races that happened in the U.S. abroad.)

Here It Is: Race & Festival for World Peace

Finally the Race & Festival is upon us. We've got about 500 folks who have registered to run/walk in the morning. (We are currently haggling with the weather genie to hold off the rain.) It'll be a terrific event to celebrate UN Day.

The Festival is ready to roll. We've got artists from India, China, Bolivia and much more. Check out the event map and Festival's artist line up. The whole event is emceed by Pamela Sorensen of Pamela's Punch fame. Figure out your day - here is the schedule:

9am Race Begins
9:30am Festival Begins
10am Awards Ceremony
10:45am Festival Resumes
2pm Festival Concludes

Swing by - we are two blocks from the GWU metro on Pennsylvania at 21st street.

You're Gonna Need Your Sneakers

I'm inviting blog followers, your friends, your relatives, your neighbors, and all Sister City members to join us on October 24, 2009 for the first-ever Sister Cities International Race & Festival for World Peace. Hosted on UN Day, we'll be hosting this 5K Run/Walk in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of Washington, DC. The event is followed by our World Cultures Festival which is free and open to the public. There will be prize giveaways, kids/family activities, food, music, dance, DJs, and tents to explore cultures and countries from around the globe. Sign up for the Race before October 10 and get the best registration rate.

We have concurrent races happening in Fort Worth, TX and Dixon, IL as well as locations in France and Romania.

Aren't DC-based? No problem - register for the Race on our site, we'll send you the event t-shirt, and you can get some friends together to walk that same morning and be part of this inaugural international event.

Got questions? Check us out at http://www.raceforworldpeace.org/. See you on the 24th!