Sanctuary Runners Australia brings together people of different backgrounds through running, walking, and jogging to foster solidarity, friendship and respect. Free to join and open to all, Sanctuary Runners Australia focuses particularly on building connections between people who have more recently arrived in Australia – as refugees, migrants, people seeking asylum or on temporary visas – and longer-term Australian residents and citizens.
Refugee Council of Australia is supporting the development of Sanctuary Runners Australia in partnership with Sanctuary Runners Ireland. Over the past eight years, the Sanctuary Runners movement has grown from its first group in Cork to 42 groups across the Republic of Ireland and new groups formed recently in England, Northern Ireland and the Netherlands.
The first activity of Sanctuary Runners Australia was participation in the Auburn Botanic Gardens parkrun in March. Since then, 110 Sanctuary Runners members from 21 countries of origin have participated in parkruns around Western Sydney and 40 people ran together on World Refugee Day in Adelaide at the Carisbrooke parkrun at Salisbury.
Sanctuary Runners Australia will be launched in August giving the opportunity to mark the beginning of this movement formally and to promote plans to take the Sanctuary Runners model to other locations around Australia.
Upcoming Sanctuary Runner events