I wasn't sure how to say this...

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

Running for Resilience is such a source of pride for me. It’s a personal achievement in overcoming my own mental health struggles, it’s a legacy item for my parents, it’s a community that’s saved lives, and it’s a community that has taken ownership of itself.

I’m proud that we haven’t accepted donations and the intention was for R4R to never accept donations. It’s been a strong conviction, and one that’s served us extremely well in unlocking the effort from so many of you.

But now, we’re at a nexus.

We’ve received an incredibly generous donation offer, and support for our community is growing faster than we know what to do with.

The offer really put me at a cross-roads, but R4R has always tried to be community-led, so it became apparent that this wasn’t just a decision for me, it was a decision for our community.

There’s a small group of runners who work behind the scenes to make R4R what it is and we’ve all decided that to direct this energy as best as we possibly can, we need to formalise Running for Resilience as a charity.

This train is rolling and if you’d like to hop on and help us with governance or volunteering, please contact us

Running for Resilience has already become so much more than just my story, it’s becoming more ‘community-owned’ with each run, and the momentum we’re generating is giving us to have a real shot at making Canberra suicide-free.

Formalising R4R as a charity not only unlocks more potential with designated effort, it also makes it less about my story again, it makes us more resilient as a community moving forward, and importantly… it’s what the community wants.

What this means.

For those of you who love the weekly runs and walks, have no fear. We don’t want to tinker with the special sauce that’s made our community so special.

What formalising as a charity allows us to do are things like creating more R4R locations and playing an increased role in helping make Canberra suicide-free via other avenues.

What we’ll do exactly, is up to the community. Because in order make Canberra suicide-free, we need to go together.

And gee-whiz, it’s exciting! Hoo-roo.

To have your say or get involved, click below

R4R does Park Run

This Saturday, R4R is crashing Umbagong District Park Run. This one is simply just to turn up and take part, but each month we’re going to try and get R4R volunteers to help run a different Park Run each time. If you have any questions, please comment below.