When strategy is selfish: bringing parkrun to the Netherlands.
parkrun for community.
Parkrun is a community-led weekly 5km run at over 2000 locations in 50+ countries. But it wasn’t in the Netherlands.
I wanted to create a new parkrun community, as selfishly I missed the ones I had done before. So, I got in touch with the manager for Europe, and wrote a strategy to do it.
Bringing teams together.
Working with a team of run directors - Laura, Mike, Eva, Rosie and Clem, we corralled a volunteer army, slack channels, whatsapp groups, maps, translations of instructions (Dutch-speaking event was our goal) and more.
Testing routes, getting permissions, hosting parkrun officers from HQ, and running trial events we came together to produce a sustainable, zero-cost event that would have a proven pro-social impact.
The best and worst timing.
My strategy proposal was perfectly timed, as I became a key organizer and run director at the Amsterdamse Bos parkrun. The first, and only (so far) Amsterdam run had 270 attendees and 20 volunteers supporting on 5 March 2020. But, the dreams of pro-social impact are on pause, as we have been since closed due to Covid-19.
We hope we can be up and ‘running’ again soon and until then, stay in touch with the volunteers meeting for distanced runs to keep up the momentum.
