Running for youth at risk- “Kee Echpat Lee””

Running group in memory of of Lee Gabriella Vatkin for youth at risk

Jerusalem Marathon the 5th , 13.03.15

On Friday the 13.03.15 we joined the Jerusalem Marathon with our running group in “Kee Echpat Lee”, in order to improve our services to at-risk youth in the city of Jerusalem.

On June 7, 2010, at the age of only 16, we lost Lee in a tragic event. Lee was taken from us prematurely, in the streets of the city center, due to an overdose of methadone. Better awareness of social services could save Lee, which was supposed to celebrate this year her 19th birthday. There are number of dangers on the streets – some more subtle, far from the eye – sometimes fatal consequences, as in our case. The services that are giving to youth at risk in Jerusalem are insufficient and it becomes to a situation that teenagers ‘fall through the cracks’, and their number is estimated in the thousands. The purpose of the run was to increase, enrich and strengthen those youth, so that incidents like there won’t happen again.

The running group was formed by friends of Lee in order to commemorate their friend and her story. This year many runners joined us, people who wanted to help us make a change, for the Jerusalem youth!

There were about 80 runners this year which is a significant part of them are defined at-risk youth.

As part of the program the students that participated in the running group “Kee echpat Lee” had a conversation with Fiona, Lee’s mother and got a special group T-shirt witch they ran with in the marathon.

Ami neshima אמי נשימהThe day of the marathon was very special, we gathered around the booth around 7:00 am together with our volunteers. Before each dispatch runners came to our booth and we talked, took pictures and ate a little.

Assigns 5 km started at 8:00, attended by students from the Yuval School in Givat Ram and teenagers from the Youth Department in Jerusalem Municipality.

Our next assigns, of the 10 km was at 9:30, attended by teenagers from the Youth promotion unit of Jerusalem and more runners, each of which heard of us in different ways.

It was an interesting day, experiential, fun, meaningful and much of accomplishment!

We would like to thank to all our runners- thanks to you we were able to raise awareness to the issues of youth at risk in Jerusalem!

Waiting to see you again next year!

Click here to see pictures from the Marathon day

To read more about our running group in 2015 click here

If you interested to join our marathon group for next year marathom please click here