4th Annual WIT 5K Run/Walk: Empowering Girls to Change the World

Court Square Fountain
Montgomery, AL 36104

Running > 5k, Walking

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Event Description

Women In Training, Inc. (WIT​), a nonprofit organization that distributes​ WITKITS​ ​ of menstrual, hygiene and dental products and provides educational and leadership opportunities to underserved girls and nonbinary youth, is holding the 4th Annual WIT 5K Run/Walk: Empowering Girls to Change the World, which will offer participants a visual tour of several historic sites in downtown Montgomery. This year, we also will be highlighting girls and women who have overcome challenges in their lives to make a difference in the communities around them. From Rosa Parks to Greta Thunberg to Sen. Tammy Duckworth to Bree and Brooke Bennett, girls and women have always been at the forefront of meaningful and lasting change on a national and international scale. All along the 3.1-mile course this year, participants will have the opportunity to learn about many of these important changemakers and to understand why organizations like WIT are vital to their communities.

For 2023, we are offering 2 events on Saturday, October 7, both starting and finishing at the Court Square Fountain on historic Dexter Avenue in downtown Montgomery:

1) WIT 5K (3.1 mile) Run/Walk Race, starting at 7:00 AM CST, in which participants will run and/or walk the 5K course for a timed result. For this race, we will have overall and age group awards based on time and all participants will receive a unique WIT 5K t-shirt.

2) WIT 2K (1.25 mile) Walking Tour, starting at 8:00 AM CST, in which participants can see some of Montgomery's historical sites and learn about changemaking girls and women without the stress of a 5K race! There will be a generous time limit for this event so that visitors can enjoy and learn at their own pace.

The course(s) and the history: Participants will walk or run on a hilly course along the streets of downtown Montgomery, beginning at Court Square Fountain, the site of a former slave auction block that now hosts a Black Lives Matter mural. Before the Civil War, the same location was the site of Montgomery’s slave markets. Enslaved Africans of all ages were auctioned at the fountain, along with land and livestock. 

In 1861, LeRoy Pope Walker, the Confederate secretary of war, sent a telegram from the Winter Building across from the fountain to General P.G.T. Beauregard, ordering him to fire on Fort Sumter, thus starting the Civil War. Nearly 100 years later, Rosa Parks boarded a bus across from the fountain and famously refused to give up her seat to a white man, in defiance of segregation laws.

 The course takes participants past the Rosa Parks statue, near where Ms. Parks refused to give up her seat on a city bus and the Alabama State Capitol, where civil rights activists convened after marching from Selma to ensure that African Americans could exercise their right to vote. Participants will also see Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King, Jr. preached from 1954 to 1960 and led the organizing meeting that sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott. and energized the civil rights movement. Runners and walkers will also pass Troy University's Rosa Parks Museum and the beautiful Davis Theater for the Performing Arts.

The race is a fundraiser for WIT’s signature WITKITS ​Campaign to provide menstrual products and hygiene items to young, low-income people who menstruate. Following the economic fallout from the pandemic, the number of girls and women who could not afford period products increased from one in five to one in four, causing them to miss school, class, work or similar obligations because they do not have the products they need. Many girls who struggle to afford period products resort to using paper towels, rags, socks and other items that place their health in jeopardy.

Since its founding in July 2019, WIT has distributed an average of over 10,000 WITKITS per year to girls and women in need across Alabama. Each registration and donation contributes to WIT's mission of ending period poverty and educating and empowering the women of tomorrow.

Click below for 5K race course:

https://www.plotaroute.com/route/2260614?units=km

 


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