Running for others' lives

Braving the summer heat, an eclectic group of marathoners set out from Mumbai to Delhi-running, cycling and driving-to spread awareness on sex trafficking. Here’s more about them

In 2017, Ohio-based John Moriarty established a marathon series called “2 Million Steps to Hope” with one of his Indian social worker acquaintances, Godfrey Fernandez, and the Rotary Club in Kalyan Nagar, Bangalore.

The marathon series aims to spread awareness about human trafficking. This year, in the fourth leg of the series, the team undertook the Mumbai-Delhi stretch-running, cycling and driving-covering 1,450 km through five states, including Gujarat and Rajasthan.

For John, a personal experience had triggered in him the passion to propagate the message of tackling human trafficking.

A few years ago, an abusive man attacked John’s daughter while she was running on a path near her University. She managed to escape the attack and got back home safely but traumatized. The incident left John shocked, who was already shaken after seeing the Liam-Neeson English-language French action-thriller Taken, which dealt with the topic of trafficking women. After his daughter’s traumatic experience, John decided to do something about the issue of human trafficking.

Running into his destiny
On researching, John realised Ohio was fourth in the USA as regards human trafficking. Further research showed him that the Global Slavery Index and the United Nations ranked India first in the world for human trafficking.

Then, in 2011, a day before running the Indianapolis Marathon, John picked up a DVD called Running the Sahara at the marathon registration expo. The 2007-full-length documentary film, narrated by Matt Damon, was about three men running across the Sahara Desert, raising awareness about the drought in North Africa. The film inspired John to use his passion for running to spread his message too. Then in 2017, through his Ohio-based NGO, Sparrow’s Hope , John joined hands with Godfrey and the Rotary Club in India to make a difference. They set up “2 Million Steps to Hope,” an initiative to raise awareness against human trafficking and aimed to fight for the protection of women and kids from human trafficking-each of the two million steps dedicated to one trafficked victim.

The team usually consists of eight people, with two main runners who do some training together but mostly trained on their own given they live in two different countries. “I trained so that cycling a 130-140 km and running 50-60 km every week became a routine for me,” says John.

Discovering India
The team held the first of their marathon series in 2017, starting with a Mumbai-Chennai run spanning over thirty-six days. In 2018, the team cycled from Chennai to Kovalam to propagate the message of human trafficking, cycling about 770 km. In 2019, the team ran from Chennai to Bhubaneshwar, covering 20 km running and 65 km cycling every day, covering 1,250 km, making pit stops along the way for their meals and staying the night in affordable lodges.

This year, the eight-member team had with two cars in addition to their cycling and running gears. “While John and Melvyn were our main runners, doing around 20 km daily, other members, including Vivian, Anes Narayana, Skip Trask, Godfrey and I, took turns to drive and bike in pairs for around 25-33 km daily,” explains one of the members, Jasher Sheriff Daniel, an avid traveller, cyclist and marathoner.

In 2018, John had also begun reaching out to trafficked women on the streets in Ohio, speaking with them and providing them purses filled with feminine hygiene items, water and a snack.

However, he soon found out that spreading the word across India was very unlike the challenges in Ohio. For starters, the diversities in culture, tradition and belief systems in India made it difficult to get people to open up.

“They were often perplexed at the statistics of India being number one in the world for human trafficking-that two million women and children are being trafficked each year,” chips in Godfrey.

Spreading hope
As the team toured along the West Coast this year, covering close to 96 km every day, their marathons involved various activities. Vivian John Thenguvila, an environmentalist and Rotractor, elaborates, “We stopped by schools and other gatherings in every neighbourhood to educate and offer students precedents of past cases. We urged them to be careful of the dangers of social media, strangers and unreal promises that lure the economically weak.”

So far, they’ve reached out to over 20,000 students, but they soon discovered the heat-wrenching naivety of most of them. “They wondered why women and kids were being trafficked, asking us who would rescue them,” shares Godfrey.

Despite the challenges, though, the team found heartening responses to their campaign. Melvyn Daniel, a passionate runner and a mixed martial arts trainer, who gives the students demonstrations of how to protect themselves by using gravitational force and targeting pressure points in the body, says, “I practise Mau-Thai and Jujitsu, self-defence techniques with simple yet effective moves,” says Melvin. “The undivided attention of the kids is heartening, motivating me to teach them more.”

The team will run its final leg of the “2 Million Steps to Hope series” in 2021, covering a circle the whole of India.