THE TOWN OF RUNNERS

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Ethiopia is known as “a land of runners”. The one town in Ethiopia most regularly mentioned as “the town of runners” is Bokoji, situated about 170 miles (or 270km) south of the capital Addis Ababa in the Arsi Highlands. The centre of Bokoji lies at 10,500 feet above sea level. Many of Ethiopia’s great champions including Derartu Tulu, Keneisa Bekele and Tirunesh Dibaba hail from this town and still today the town continues to produce many great runners who go on to represent Ethiopia at international level. 

Great Ethiopian Run (GER) in collaboration with the Ministry of Tourism staged the 2022 Great Bokoji Run on 15th May 2022. The event was staged to inspire young athletes and to raise the profile of the town as a good tourist destination.

The event also included hiking and cycling activities that took place over the weekend of 14 and 15 May 2022.

The 2nd edition of the Great Bokoji Run will take place on 14 May 2023

Registration will be announced in due time

Click here to see results

Go Green 2022-23 Plan

ACTION 1: WE WILL MINIMISE CARBON EMISSIONS 

We are promoting “3km of walking per day” to get us all to think more about walking in place of making short car journeys.

We encourage participants living in close proximity (3km radius) to race venue to walk to and back from race venue on race day.

We are also encouraging our participants to use public transport and shared car transport for arriving at and returning from the race. 

We will deploy electric cars to lead the elite race.

ACTION 2: WE WILL RECYCLE WHEREVER POSSIBLE 

As in the past year’s race, we have used recyclable (eco-friendly) materials in the production of our race t-shirts & goody bags. We have continued our partnership with PETCO to collect and recycle all plastic bottles and other rubbish consumed and produced on race day.

ACTION 3: WE WILL ENCOURAGE DISPOSAL OF RUBBISH 

Rubbish bins will be placed along the race course every 250m.

We’ll also put more portable toilets on race course

ACTION 4: WE WILL USE LESS PLASTIC 

This year we are using a lighter water bottle for participants to make it easier for recycling. Our goody bag is also made of a non-plastic material which can be reused for shopping by participants.

ACTION 5: WE WILL USE LESS PAPER 

We no longer use paper for registering participants. All registration has been done electronically.

Participants also receive their race magazine electronically in place of printed magazines.

We use more e-posters, e-fliers, e-invites

Re-use scrap papers for internal communication purposes

We put a disclaimer: “think about the environment before you print this email” on all our electronic communications as a reminder to our stakeholders.

ACTION 6: WE WILL WORK TO CREATE AWARENESS ABOUT ENVIRONMENT 

Putting Go Green logo on every promotional materials

Scheduled (weekly/monthly) posts on social media about environment and GER’s Go Green 5 strands

Run social media campaigns to Teach/Train/Encourage people not to throw rubbish in their day to day activities

We invite all our participants and stakeholders to join us in this campaign and to contribute positively to the sustainability of our environment.