Humanities teacher Isaias Franco’s Running for Change program recently received a $2,500 grant from the Marin Leadership Foundation, a local non-profit organization. Franco said that the money for the grant will be used to help fund the program’s planned trip to England this June, during which students in the program will compete in the London half-marathon. “We had an awards ceremony [for the grant]…we took six of the kids there, [and] some of them spoke about how the program has impacted them and their lives,” Franco said. “We plan on using that money for flights and accommodations and registration fees in England.”

Running for Change is a running-oriented program directed by Franco, the purpose of which is to help students who are experiencing challenges in a variety of different areas learn team-building and collaborative skills.

Franco said that Running for Change has received increased attention in recent months, partially due to an increased social media presence. “We’ve received a ton of media attention [recently],” Franco said. “We appeared in KPIX, and in an article in the Marin IJ. We now are on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram…that is super exciting. It gives us a lot more opportunity to get our name out there to people who are well known. We’ve had some [Facebook] likes from certain celebrities, which has been really cool.”

Franco said that a recent collaboration with the Tam Boosters Foundation has increased the program’s ability to fundraise. “Right now we’re not a 501 c3 non-profit [a non-profit organization that qualifies as tax-deductible], so donations that come in are not tax-deductible,” Franco said. “So we talked to Boosters and they’re going to allow us to be under their 501 c3 umbrella. We [now] can accept bigger donations, we can reach out to companies and say ‘hey, we can now offer you a tax break if you give us a donation.’ That’s been huge. I think that’s really going to help our overall fundraising, because now people are more likely to donate larger sums of money.”