Mission

To educate and prepare girls for a life time of self-respect and healthy living.

About

Girls on the Run® is a life-changing, experiential learning programs for girls age eight to thirteen years old. The programs combine training for a 3.1 mile running event with self-esteem enhancing, uplifting workouts. The goals of the programs are to encourage positive emotional, social, mental, spiritual and physical development.

Objectives

The Girls on the Run objective is to reduce the potential display of at-risk activities among its participants. The goal is fewer adolescent pregnancies and eating disorders, less depression and suicide attempts, as well as fewer substance/alcohol abuse problems and confrontations with the juvenile justice system.

Vision

• To support a network of Girls on the Run sites across the country
• To provide quality and life-changing programming for girls and women, and to provide quality and life-changing experiences to the women involved in the delivery and development of the program as well
• To support an intensive, nationwide, media campaign that will provide positive, healthy images of girls and women
• To promote an environment that allows girls and women to reach their full potential
  To constantly strive to improve itself by staying open-minded, trusting and flexible, even in the business world
• To enhance the lives of all involved in the program
• To influence literally hundreds of thousands of girls and women in the next 30 years by establishing Girls on the Run sites around the country and the world
• To be a foremost expert on ways to raise and support a healthy girl in these ever-changing times
• To assist in nothing less than a complete transformation in the way girls and women perceive themselves and their place in society.
  

Girls On Track

Girls on the Run is the name of our organization, but we have two programs:
 

• Girls on the Run -- for 3rd-5th graders
• Girls on Track -- for 6th-8th graders
   

The Girls on the Run curriculum has been in use since the fall of 1996. Since that time thousands of girls have been through the program-but what we soon discovered is, they were having so much fun and getting so connected, they wanted something that would carry them through middle school. We originally wanted to call it Girls on the Run for Middle Schoolers. The girls who were participating told us they wanted something they could call their own. Hence the birth of Girls on Track.

The principal philosophies and psychological research for both programs are the same yet the depth of processing the topics varies with the two different curricula. We can go into more targeted and age-appropriate discussion regarding certain topics (eating disorders, tobacco and alcohol use, personal/internet safety and harassment to name a few) with the middle school participants, whereas with the younger girls the discussion remains a bit more vague or may not occur at all.