(Jeremy C. Fox for Boston.com)
North End resident Kaitlyn Greeley ran in Nashua Street Park last week.
The Boston Marathon is a daunting challenge for most runners, but one North End woman will have the encouragement of knowing that with each step she’s helping young children in need.
Kaitlyn Greeley is a first-time marathon runner who has dedicated her efforts to raising money to support Jumpstart, an organization that offers extra one-on-one help to children falling behind in Head Start programs in the Greater Boston area.
Greeley, 26, is a Roslindale native who moved to the North End last year after earning her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Bridgewater State University. She began working with Jumpstart when she was just a freshman and served as a student mentor and tutor for the organization until graduation.
“You work with that child on learning how to read, [for example, but] sometimes it’s not even that, it’s learning how to identify some internal issues that are going on because of family and home life and figuring out how to either deal with them or put them aside so that they don’t get in the way of learning and making friends and the everyday life of a kindergartner or first-grader,” Greeley said.
Greeley has so far collected more than $3,000 in donations toward her $5,000 goal, but she hopes that with time and more business sponsorships, she can get her total up as high as $8,000.
“Everyone who’s donated … has been people I had never even expected,” she said. “Some folks I didn’t even know — they found out from Twitter or whatever, and they ended up liking the cause, liking that I’m running a marathon, knowing me through someone else, so they donated. It’s been pretty amazing to see who will actually pull the trigger.”
But Greeley isn’t just raising funds for the organization. She has committed to hosting a series of book drives — one in the name of every person who donates to Jumpstart through her run. Already that translates into around 50 book drives, with the books collected going to Jumpstart and Head Start programs in Boston Public Schools.
“It’s going to be an interesting rest of the year,” Greeley said. “But I also have a lot of people who, when I talked about doing this, had said they would help me out and be my volunteers. … Sometimes I regret it later, but I can’t help but jump feet-first into things.”
The same tendency has applied to Greeley’s running: she decided to take on the Boston Marathon despite having never run in a race more than five miles. She said her training has gone well — the most difficult part has been tapering down to shorter runs in recent weeks as part of her final preparation.
She started running because she envied the freedom and peace of mind runners appeared to her to have, even though she actually never enjoyed the activity before.
“I hate running, but now I’m addicted to it,” she said. And she’s seen the benefits in her own life, in her increased fitness and decreased stress levels, even during the recent process of making career changes. Having worked in the past for nonprofit groups and political campaigns, Greeley recently went out on her own to work as an independent consultant for both, helping to craft messages and build fundraising efforts.
“When I was that stressed, all I wanted to do was go for a run,” Greeley said.
She plans to keep running for a good while. She will be participating in the New England Color Run in July and has been accepted to run in the Chicago Marathon in October and Las Vegas Marathon in December.
As she has trained for the marathon, Greeley has written about her experiences on a personal blog. She’s happy to see that friends and acquaintances who have followed her blog have been inspired to take up running themselves.
“That’s what I try to do in my life — encourage and inspire people — so the fact that I can do that through my running is great.”
To join Greeley’s effort and donate to Jumpstart, click here.
Email Jeremy C. Fox at jeremycfox@gmail.com.
Follow Jeremy C. Fox on Twitter: @jeremycfox.
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