Molding our future generation

A few years ago, I remember volunteering for an event held on the track at Western Michigan University. I helped set up by hanging signs and flags and doing other minor tasks. Though it involved a lot of work, at the time I truly didn’t realize how big of an event this was going to be.

The next day, I went down to the track and saw tons, and I mean tons, of elementary and middle school girls who filled the stadium, all awaiting the return of their fellow teammates who were running a 5K throughout the streets of Kalamazoo.

With the upcoming Girls on the Run event on May 22 at Eastern Michigan University, I want to encourage everyone to go out and support the nearly 100 teams from a span of five counties that are participating.

During the 10-week program, the girls learn about anything from body image to ways of handling gossip to healthy eating habits. To top it all off, they train and run a 5K at the end of the program.

With so many problems facing our children and schools today, its programs like these that are teaching valuable lessons to our girls who will hopefully carry these valuable lessons for a lifetime. Not to mention it encourages physical fitness in a culture where childhood diabetes has become a norm.

Admittedly, when I heard about the program, I wished there would have been something like this when I was growing up.

It might have saved me, along with a number of my friends, some valuable lessons that we had to learn by other means.

So go ahead, go out and cheer for the girls either along the route or as they cross the finish line. Cheer for them as they rail against the stereotypical photos of models plastered across our magazine covers and our TVs. Cheer for them as they become comfortable in their own skin. And by all means, cheer for them because they are our future.