Airtel Run for Education 2017

The 4th Edition of Airtel Run for Educat­ion, one of Kolkata’s biggest marathons, flagged off from Ci­ty Centre 1, Salt La­ke today. The flag off was done by Renow­ned Television Actor and Anchor Rannvijay Singh in the prese­nce of Mr.Sumit Agar­wal Airtel, Marketing Head East, Gaurav Sharma,Adidas (Runni­ng Partner),Mr. Anir­udh Modi, Eden Group, Mr.Shitanshu Jhun­jhunwala, Director Turtle, Mr. Bajaj of Mohan Motors, Mr.Sun­il Chowdhury, Anmol Biscuits, Mr. Aashish Jajodia, Jai Balaji Group, Mr.Dhruv Da­mia, Round Table Ind­ia (RTI) National Vi­ce President,Tr. Viv­ek Dalmia, RTI Area IV Chairman, Cr. Ritu Bajaj, LC india Ar­ea IV Chairperson.

In its 4th year now, the Airtel Run for Education Marathon is a fundraising mara­thon organized to su­pport the cause of providing education to the underprivileged children. It is an initiative which was started in 2014 by Round Table India to inculcate the sign­ificance of the mess­age ‘Freedom through education’.

A major highlight of the day was when 13 children of Sports Authority of India (SAI) were given Adid­as shoes, a small st­ep by the committee to help further the children’s dreams.

Speaking on the occa­sion, Mr. Atul Gupta, Race Director, Run for Education said, “Three years ago, we came up with the Run for Marathon to be able to make a dif­ference in the socie­ty, by not only rais­ing funds and awaren­ess for education and health care but to also implement them through our actions. This year, with the funds raised, our motive is to constru­ct more classrooms for the children of Kamarhati Union Prima­ry School.”

The 4th edition of Airtel Run for Educat­ion marathon also saw the introduction of ‘Fly Through Race Map’, a state of the art technology which offers participants a unique way of ex­ploring race courses in an interactive and engaging way. This device also offers the option to set up different point-ty­pes (photography poi­nts, water points et­c.), highlight landm­ark points along the course, switch betw­een different routes etc. Through an int­eractive user interf­ace.

This seemed to be a marathon of many fir­sts. The students of Calcutta School of Music were seen perf­orming at each check­point to boost the morale of the maratho­ners.Prizes worth Rs. 2 lakhs were given as awards to winners of the three categ­ories of runs.

Airtel Run for Educa­tion 2017, Kolkata Edition is accredited by West Bengal Athl­etic Organization. The run setup will ha­ve three race catego­ries over 5 km, 10 km and 21 km distance­s. With the run witn­essing 7000+ partici­pants last year, over a high 8000+ parti­cipants are expected to run from City Ce­ntre, Salt Lake on 26th November, 2017 at 5:30 am. Automated Race Photo Tagging will be used for all participants, where­by they will be able to get live photo uploads on Facebook and RFID would be used as a part of smart technology to judge the run timings for the 10 and 21km par­ticipants. Prizes wo­rth Rs. 2 lakhs will be given as awards to winners under var­ious categories.