Run for 1 Planet heads through Bonifay

BONIFAY – Two Canadians are in the southern swing of a run around North America raising attention to the environment. Matt Hill and Stephanie Tait were at Joann Foxworth’s Fig Tree Bed and Breakfast on Tuesday, Dec. 23, before heading for Pensacola as part of Run For 1 Planet.

The concept is simple. Hill and Tait started in Vancouver, British Columbia on May 4 and will finish up there by running a marathon (26 miles) a day around the continent. They headed across Canada, down the eastern seaboard to Jacksonville, and now west through Texas, California (by about Marsh 2009) and north to home, hopefully by May 2009.

The process of developing the project was a bit more complicated, Hill said.

“We were thinking how could we give back for having such an amazing life here,” he said. “It always came back to the environment.”

“It’s sort of like carving Michelangelo’s David,” Tait said. “You had to chip away to get to the inside.”

The chipping away took considerable time, but both avid runners (Hill has also been in ironman competitions) eventually worked out the project, gathered sponsors and put everything in motion.

“We spent 10 years building this,” Hill said. They formally committed to doing the project on Dec. 9, 2006.

Both had to take time off from their careers. Tait is a successful life and business coach and speaker, and Hill is a well-known voice actor who played Raphael in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon movies (and in TMNT III live), Edd in Cartoon Network’s Ed, Edd and Eddy, and plays Ryo in Ronin Warriors.

“We wouldn’t be anywhere else,” Tait said. Hill admitted he was a little leery about asking Tait to (at least temporarily) give up her life to do the project, “but she said, let’s do this together.”

The project benefits from Tait’s experience in team building as part of her career and is supported by numerous sponsors and individuals, including Hill’s nephew, Cody, the pair’s “roadie,” who travels along with the pair in an environmentally friendly RV called E-Volution.

“It feels almost like a rock tour,” Hill joked.

The project has several goals:

•Using publicity garnered from the tour to heighten awareness about environmental issues.

•Run one marathon a day totaling about 11,000 miles at seven hours a run, and wearing out an estimated 16 pairs of running shoes each throughout the project.

•Inspire one million new actions for the earth. To do this Hill and Tait go to schools (grades 2-7) and provide examples and hold classes for school children where they learn simple things to help the environment. So far students have done everything from recycling to vegetation restoration.

•Raise $1 million for the Legacy of Action to help students with funding to generate their own ideas.

“They are so eager,” Hill said of the students they have met so far. “The Legacy would provide seed capital for kids to do this themselves. They would be mini-ambassadors.” Kids could form “Green Teams” to carry out “actions for the earth.” Hill said they show students things they could do in everyday life to help the environment.

“We have seen some amazing schools,” Hill said, and he and Tait were equally impressed with the students and their eagerness to get involved. “How powerful it can be when kids are teaching kids.”

For more on the tour and information about the project, go to www.runforoneplanet.com

The Action Challenge
As part of Run for 1 Planet, Matt Hill and Stephanie Tait offer a tip a day for ways that can help the environment. On their handout they offer the following Top 10 Actions to take:

1.    Eat local and organic
2.    Turn off your car
3.    Eliminate plastic bags and bring your own bag to the store
4.    Use “green” cleaners
5.    Turn off the lights
6.    Turn off the taps
7.    Reduce, reuse and recycle
8.    Compost
9.    Bring your own bottle
10.    Teach your children well

Source; www.runforoneplanet.com