This morning, Bengaluru put on its running shoes to sprint up to 10 kilometres. There is all the fanfare and hooplah surrounding the 10 kilometre Sunfeast run, most often mistaken for a marathon (a marathon’s distance is about 42.2 kilometres).

Runners at the Kanteerava stadium (pic: Naveen Ningaiah)

With such hype, one often wonders what goes into organizing and preparing for a mammoth event such as this. Rumors have begun to do rounds - the celebrities who have pledged to raise funds are failing and backing out. People are highly likely to continue with some ever-so-often-heard rants – “The traffic was blocked and we had to walk the whole distance”, “People on wheelchairs had a lot of difficulty”, so on and so forth. Then there are the questions - will the run this year meet expectations? Will there be mountains of plastic garbage yet again? Is it just yet another commercial event?  

I talked to some people associated with the run earlier last week, to get some honest views.

Do we really need an event of this scale?

”Glamour plays a big role in attracting the huge number of people off their couches to come out and run. More importantly the NGOs get a nonpareil visibility”, says Meena Dave of Give India, who is heading the volunteer team of Bangalore Cares, a NGO who have partnered with the organizers, Procam to coordinate with the NGOS looking to raise money through the event. 

Runners can register for a particular charity and request well wishers to donate through the Bangalore Cares website.

”Marathons are a very effective and low cost way of generating funds. Our expenses are less than Rs. 40,000 and we are hoping to reach the Rs. 10 Lakh mark”, opines Vishal Thalreja, Co-founder & Director, Dream a Dream, an NGO that works with children.

Kavitha Krishnamoorthy, founder of Kilikili, an organization that advocates inclusive play spaces for children, says, “Such an event gives a peg for smaller organizations that can't invest time and energy in fund raising”. She is hoping to raise about a Lakh this year, a third of their annual budget.

Costumed participants at the run (pic: Ramachandran R)

Is it just yet another commercial money making event?

Santosh Padmanabhan from Runner's High, who is coaching kids from Ananya (a school for underprivileged children) and Thulir (an education resource centre for children) for the run, feels that the Sunfeast Run is all about money.

He has run for marathons abroad and has not seen them charge any money for the NGOs. “In fact organizers usually give a percentage of their profits to a chosen NGO but here Procam is busy spinning money out of the whole affair”, he says.

Thalreja however says, in the case of runs abroad the NGOs can block a few seats and are allowed to auction them at a higher price to make some money. NGOs can use a generic platform like JustGiving.com to raise money. “Eventually we will move to that level.”

Thalreja, who is also on the board of Bangalore Cares, clarifies, “the fee of Rs. 2000 goes (to Bangalore Cares) so that they can sustain their much needed effort”. However, the run itself was a big-ticket event, with many well known brands associated with it.

What was expected from this year’s run?

From the first event last year when 18,000 people had registered and Rs. 43 Lakhs were collected for charity, there has been increased response this time around. “There are around 23,000 people running. We are expecting it to reach Rs. 1 Crore benefiting 92 NGOs that have registered”, says Bruno Goveas, Director, Public Relations, Procam International.

"Bangalore Cares (website) has improved significantly”, says Kavitha. They had incorporated a payment gateway and personalized web pages for those pledging. “They have done a much better job as facilitators this year”.

Aarthi Muralidharan, a software professional with Dell has been volunteering with Ashwini Charitable Trust (ACT) for the last five years. She says this year's run has been much better organized. They have close to 130 runners and have managed to go rake up Rs. 10 Lakhs as compared to Rs 1 Lakh last year.

What goes into making such an event a reality?

Kanishka Lahiri, an engineer with AMD running for Runner’s High, comments on the logistics, “It's never easy to organize a race with tens of thousands of participants. Overall, I'd rate it a B+ compared to other races I've seen (Philadelphia, New York, and New Jersey Marathons). It was good to see emergency medical help available and frequent water stops”. 

Mayank Rungta, a software engineer ran the Sunfeast 10K run for Saahas, an NGO that works on waste management.

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