‘The focus is on solidarity, friendship and respect. We’ve a cup of tea and a chat after the run’

Playing a team sport with friends or colleagues or being part of a group who regularly run or swim can be a life-enhancing experience. It’s not just the physical activity that is good for us but also the camaraderie that fulfills our need for social contact. So, what if someone decided to bring people together for a physical activity who might otherwise never meet?

This, in essence is what former journalist Graham Clifford did five years ago when he set up Sanctuary Runners. His aim was to bring together Irish people and those living in direct provision centres around Ireland for regular runs in their locality. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, people who have moved to towns and villages in Ireland from that war-ravaged country are also invited into these running groups.

Joining Sanctuary Runners was the perfect opportunity for retired school teacher Marie Egan to combine her love of running with her passion for social justice. “I was getting worried about what was going on [a reference to the protests outside direct provision centres and other locations where migrants live] and I thought this was an opportunity for me to get to know people and make new friends,” says the Dublin woman.

Egan met Nigerian woman Eniola Olanrewaju, who lives in the Travel Lodge in Ballymun, at the run in Poppintree Park on Saturday morning. “I’d never run in my life before so I just started here in this country,” explains Olanrewaju. Her room-mate in the Travel Lodge told her about the local running group in Ballymun and she now either joins the runners or volunteers as a guide along the 5km route. “I’ve met a lot of people and made some friends,” adds Olanrewaju, who is doing a pre-nursing course with the hope to study nursing in Ireland next year.

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Egan says that it’s simply about turning up and being friendly to others who are there. “It’s about coming together as a group. The focus is on solidarity, friendship and respect. We’ve a cup of tea and a chat after the run,” explains Egan.

She says that joining Sanctuary Runners has totally changed her as a person. “It has given me the opportunity to show solidarity. With this informal interaction, you can give people advice or direct them towards things they need.”

Ignatia Ndlovu, who is originally from Durban in South Africa, lives in Dublin city centre. “Members of Sanctuary Runners came to ask us if we wanted to join, so about 10 of us go every Saturday to the run in Fairview Park,” she explains.

Ndlovu, a former office manager who is now doing a pre-nursing course, says that she has mostly met Irish people on the weekly runs. “People I meet there are very supportive and friendly, very caring and non-judgmental. I find it easy to talk about myself to them,” says Ndlovu, who also meets Irish people at her local church.

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The ethos of Sanctuary Runners is to welcome people without asking them about their reasons for coming to Ireland and how they got here. A not-for-profit organisation, its original aim remains core to its endeavours – to offer a welcome through running to people who came to live in Ireland.

“Initially, it was a way for people in direct provision to meet people in their local towns but we want it to be for all migrants, whether you are a Brazilian working in a meat factory or someone working for Facebook or LinkedIn. We want each running group to be representative of the place they live,” explains Ailís McSweeney, a former international sprinter who is the recently appointed national co-ordinator of Sanctuary Runners.

Olympians Olive Loughnane, Rob and Marian Heffernan, Thomas Barr, Claire and Eimear Lambe and Nadia Power have all lent their support to the organisation, as have former Olympian runner Sonia O’Sullivan and former Gaelic footballer Tomás Ó Sé.

John Riordan, a retired technologist, is on the board of Sanctuary Runners and has made some good friends through his local runs. “I first met Muhammad Majid on the Sanctuary Runners’ relay team at the Cork Marathon in 2019. Two and a half months later, I met him again on a run and he gave me a big hug. It was then I realised that I was one of the few connections he had with Irish people,” explains Riordan. Five years later and Riordan counts Muhammad as one of his close friends. “I’ve seen how he moved out of direct provision, got a job as a chef in a restaurant in Cork, bought his own home and brought his wife and two children here from rural Pakistan,” says Riordan.

In a recent interview with Ian O’Riordan for this newspaper, Clifford said the key is not to focus on the negativity, fear or chaos surrounding people’s arrival in Ireland. “Our only focus is on positivity, bringing people together, away from the disconnect of direct provision or emergency accommodation, not setting them apart. Fear is a negative emotion. It serves no good,” he said.

Riordan adds that he has learned to let the conversation flow when he meets people, rather than going straight in with questions about where people are from and why they are here. “There is something very democratising about throwing on the same T-shirt to run together and let the conversation flow,” he adds.

Currently, there are about 34 Sanctuary Runners groups across Ireland with about 1,000 regular runners. People run, jog, walk, push buggies or help along the routes. The groups with their distinctive blue T-shirts also pop up at family fun runs and marathons. Other groups have emerged organically in London and Cologne in Germany, and the organisation is open to expanding further.

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McSweeney says that a 2020 survey carried out by Sanctuary Runners found that 42 per cent of people in direct provision had never run before. “Culturally, you could come from a place where nobody ran,” she says, recalling how the Irish running phenomenon has really only taken off in the last few decades. That same survey found that 74 per cent of Irish people had never spoken to anyone from direct provision before joining Sanctuary Runners.

McSweeney also remarks how some naturally talented runners have gone on to join athletics clubs after starting out on park runs with their local group of Sanctuary Runners.

“Clonliffe Harriers athletics club have sponsored two of our young, fast runners and some others have also found a way into running in Ireland through Sanctuary Runners,” she explains.

Later this year, the organisation will launch a new initiative with Swim Ireland. The so-called Sanctuary Swimmers will invite a group of locals and newcomers to learn to swim in the sea with a Swim Ireland instructor. These four-week courses, which are planned for coastal locations in Kerry, Cork, Wicklow, Galway and Dublin, will take place in July, August and September in 2023.

In 2022, a pilot of Sanctuary Swimmers saw 18 people from 13 different countries learn to swim in Cork. For some of the swimmers, it was their first time swimming in the sea, and a short video shows how they overcame their fears of being in the open water in the cold seas of the Atlantic Ocean.

Clifford, who was there to support the pilot sessions, says that a lot of people were intrigued watching the debutant swimmers from the beach. “Open-sea swimming is quite a spiritual thing. You have the immediate physical effect and then something else goes on in your head. For people who are living in direct provision in particular confined spaces, I think that feeling of being in the open water brings a feeling that stays with you.”

And while Sanctuary Swimmers gets its sea legs, Clifford has another dream, which is to get one million people running in solidarity with migrants all across the world ahead of the Paris Olympics in 2024.