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Empowerment: Start a Running Club and Change Lives

giving backmy worldLeaving a Legacybettering communities

Homeless—Step outside your door or pick a trail, any trail, and lace up your sneakers. Take a run! Your chemical composition changes and your endorphins increase creating feelings of happiness! Running is one thing that can produce a natural, instantaneous high. Running makes you feel strong, light, and empowered. So I thought; what if I could teach the homeless to run too?

The idea came to me when I watched Legend, 8, a homeless child, and his mother interact.
It was horrible. There are no words to describe the brokenness of a family lost.

If we could teach moms like her (homeless or not) to do something fun with their kids, (weekly) it could change their destiny. Instead of a cycle of criticism, inactivity, boredom, or roaming the streets like homeless do, they could run. Sounds crazy right? After all, homeless people who live in shelters or under bridges are just trying to survive.

But homelessness is about a loss of self and overall wellness. Try being homeless for one day. After roaming the streets foraging for food with no place to sleep or shower, you feel grimy and unkempt. After a week, depressed. After months, almost nonexistent. There are thousands of homeless children on the streets of Texas and our Nation. I figure if we can teach their moms and dads how to improve physically, mentally, and emotionally, we can change their world right away.

So I brought the idea to SOUL, a massive street ministry in Dallas that feeds the homeless. Their mission is to feed the minds, bodies, and souls. When we run each Sunday, we will have homeless men, women, and children run along with our mascot, Batman the homeless dog! We have doctors, wellness experts, and nutritionists lined up to come share their wisdom.

Want to help change lives? Lace up your sneakers! Come join me. For more information on how to start a homeless running club near you, contact Tammy Kling at www.escapesuburbia.wordpress.com or Facebook.

What are simple ways to improve your community and help those in need? How can you help change a life this week, month, or year?

Photo courtesy of Flickr.

Tammy Kling is a life coach, advocate for the homeless, and international author of 29 books including The Compass. Tammy is also the founderr of Write it Out, an organization that helps gang members, the homeless, and those living on the street write out their hopes & dreams via writers workshops, free journals and various other resources.

In addition to writing and coaching, Tammy is a mom of two boys, an avid trail and mountain runner, blogger, and adventure travel writer.

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I'm a book author, homeschool mom of boys, mountain runner and advocate for the homeless. Founder of Write it Out, a homeless recovery program that teaches writers workshops to the homeless and gang members, in order to focus on using the power of words to restore, recover, and rehabilitate. www.escapesuburbia.wordpress.com

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