Runners for Life, a community of people who run to get fit organised its second edition of their unique event, ‘Feet on the Street’, a five kilo metre run. The event held in the city on 5th April saw 301 enthusiastic runners out on the streets on a Sunday morning.

The format of ‘Feet on the Street’ is unique. These are monthly runs. It is not a track and field event, but is held at a central location. While the first edition was held at Cubbon Park, the second edition was conducted around Ulsoor Lake. In addition to running and popularising the sport of running, runners would also be able to support a cause. As more people start running and realizing the importance of running to get healthy, they will also benefit from being a part of Runners for Life, the largest community of runners in the country. Hence, the tagline of the event was ‘Let’s get Bangalore running’.

This time the event was flagged off by Bangalore’s young feet on the street – all the children present had their chance to be chief guests for a day and to shout ‘Ready. Set. Go’ to get the run started. After the run, the participants were treated to a display of fire safety and fire rescue, courtesy the Fire Services Department and the Home Guards.

The April edition of Feet on the Street was in partnership with Area Suraksha Mitra – Kannu Teri Bengaluru, a joint initiative of Janaagraha and Civil Defence for citizen preparedness, both in contingencies as well as for neighbourhood security. The central idea was to build a trained force through a representation from every area in the city covering 50 civil defence divisions in Bangalore, and a volunteer group of 5000+ Area Suraksha Mitras/Wardens. Media partners were Radio Indigo, KSTDC, Golden Chariot, End to End Marketing Solutions

What the Area Suraksha Mitra campaign aims to achieve

• Engage volunteers, and encourage them to rally together in their neighbourhoods for preparedness in contingencies and day-to-day security

• Create awareness and readiness for a safer city

• Build a trained citizen force for neighbourhood security representing every area in the city

• Improve police citizen partnerships for a safe city

• Empower citizens to deal with better preparedness toward any threat posed in their homes/neighbourhood

What is the benefit to citizens of Bangalore?

• Reassurance of a safe neighbourhood and better channels of communication between citizens and law-keeping agencies

• A sense of involvement of safety issues of the community

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