News / Health & Wellness
Hilary Swank Kicks Off Round-the-World Run for Clean Drinking Water Awareness
Academy Award-winning actress Hilary Swank kicked off the Blue Planet Run on Friday in effort to bring awareness to the 1.1 billion people who don’t have access to clean drinking water.
With just 20 runners ready to cover more than 15,000 miles over 95 days the Blue Planet Run was orchestrated to bring the problem of unsanitary drinking water to attention of the world.
Jin Zindell, founder of Blue Planet Run, spoke about the goal of each runner, saying, “They will be informing ordinary individuals that we can do something extraordinary, like save a person's life for $30, by bringing safe drinking water to them.”
Swank spoke outside the U.N. headquarters in New York just before the run started and told the crowd “Making safe drinking water available is everyone's problem, and it's a problem it will take everyone to solve.”
Running 10 miles at a time, the runners will cross 16 countries. After completing their run in the U.S. they will fly to Ireland to run, catch a ferry to England as well as France. From France they will cross Europe and Asia and then fly from Beijing to Japan befor finishing back in the States.
