If you’ve ever been a bridesmaid, you’ve probably been told you’ll definitely use your tangerine orange chiffon dress again, only to watch it gather dust in the closet for years after. Now there’s an excuse to pull it out again – Runaway Bridesmaids, a one-mile race in Hoboken on Sept. 27, run exclusively by men and women in dresses.
If the dresses draw attention, it will be for a good cause. Most of the proceeds from the race entry fees will help create an anti-human trafficking training program at Newark International Airport, and runners are raising additional money online to support New Light, a shelter for the children of sex workers in Kolkata, India.
The fun run is the brainchild of Holly Corbett, Amanda Pressner Kreuser, and Jennifer Brennan, three friends who met in the world of New York media. In 2006, the trio quit their jobs and spent a year travelling the world, a journey later memorialized in their memoir “The Lost Girls.”
The women first encountered Village Volunteers, the partner organization of the New Light shelter, while volunteering at a school for pre-teen girls in Kenya. Corbett said the experience “really opened my eyes to how I won what New York Times writer Nicholas Kristof calls ‘the lottery of life’ – just how lucky I was to be born a woman in America.”
“A lot of our friends who were getting married said, ‘Oh, you’ll definitely wear this bridesmaid dress again!’” – Holly Corbett
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“We were on our way to pick out bridesmaids’ dresses for my upcoming wedding,” said Corbett, “and we’re joking around because…a lot of our friends who were getting married said, ‘Oh, you’ll definitely wear this bridesmaid dress again!’”
“We kind of just joked around and said ‘Why don’t we prove them right?’ put the dresses back on, and run in them,” explained Corbett.
The inaugural Runaway Bridesmaids run was a heat in the 2012 New York Road Runners Fifth Avenue Mile along Central Park. Corbett said her team’s gaudy dresses stood out among the serious runners, especially those worn by men.
“There were female police officers catcalling them,” said Corbett.
More importantly, the event raised almost $11,000 for charity.
Runaways in Hoboken
Now Corbett’s bringing the race to her new home in Hoboken, where she has lived for the past two years. As Corbett and her Lost Girl companions got married and had children, they began migrating from Manhattan and Brooklyn to Hoboken, where their significant others lived. The final member of the group, Pressner Kreuser, just arrived this past week.
Corbett has a son and is six months pregnant, and she is passionate about her adopted home. “It’s really nice to have everyone around and within walking distance,” she said.
She believes her charity race will thrive in the small-town climate of Hoboken. “I love the community involvement here and we all live here now and we want it to be something within the community that we live in,” said Corbett.
This year’s event will be part of the 4th Annual Hoboken Pump and Run, a five-kilometer race that begins with maximum reps on a bench press. The Pump and Run will benefit the Wounded Warrior Project, which helps injured soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Runaway Bridemaids course will be a short loop around the waterfront at Pier A. Corbett said she picked a short distance so that anyone will feel comfortable participating, and emphasized that walking was totally acceptable. The event will be followed by an after party at Little Town NJ, a restaurant and bar on the south waterfront.
Anti-trafficking program sponsored
Runaway Bridemaids is working with Airline Ambassadors International to establish a program at Newark International Airport that will train flight attendants to identify possible human trafficking victims and properly alert the authorities.
Seventy percent of each $45 race entry fee will go towards the Airline Ambassadors project. If 200 people sign up for the race, said Corbett, the proceeds will be able to fully fund the program. She mentioned that flight attendants associated with Airline Ambassadors were promoting the Runaway Bridesmaids event on all major airlines.
Corbett first learned about Airline Ambassadors’ efforts when she met the organization’s founder Nancy Rivard during her year abroad. Human trafficking is a hidden but very real problem in New Jersey, said Corbett, and the Newark airport is a major hub for transporting victims.
Just this past February, the FBI rescued 16 sex-trafficked children brought to New Jersey to service heightened demand for prostitutes during the Super Bowl, according to a Fox News report.
The Runaway Bridesmaids are also hosting a fundraising campaign for the New Light shelter in India on crowdrise.com. Runners register as fundraisers and seek donations from their friends, co-workers and relatives. The site asks people to give at least $32, in recognition of the $32 billion the International Labor Organization says organized crime earns annually from human trafficking worldwide.
The individual who registers for the race and raises the most amount of money on crowdrise.com will win an all-expenses paid volunteer service trip to Colombia, Haiti, or Guatemala.
Those interested in participating in the run can register at http://tinyurl.com/pbfm5bh. The fundraising campaign for New Light can be found at https://www.crowdrise.com/runawaybridesmaids.
Carlo Davis may be reached at cdavis@hudsonreporter.com.