Run with Purpose

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — For student-athletes Ella Lambert and Daniel Gaw, running is part of everyday life. A graduate student and member of the cross country and track and field teams, Lambert has likely covered as many miles as a Commodore as the distance between Nashville and her hometown of Cincinnati. Less enamored of running miles at a time, Gaw has nonetheless sweated out his share of sprints as a senior long snapper on the football team.

Most days, they run to test their own limits. They run for the family and friends who support them in pursuing their athletic passions. They run for teammates and team goals. From time to time, Lambert admittedly more than Gaw, they might even run for fun.

Saturday, in the inaugural Nashville Aruna Run 5k at Vaughn’s Gap in Warner Parks, they hope to inspire their community to run for victimized women who dream of freedom, employment and a better life half a world away.

• Learn more about the 2024 Nashville Aruna Run

(Photo courtesy Ella Lambert/Aruna Project)

Founded more than a decade ago by former NCAA Division I student-athletes April and Ryan Berg, the Aruna Project works to help victims and survivors of human trafficking and sex slavery, primarily in South Asia. Initially conceived and proposed by Lambert, who then enlisted Gaw to help organize the event, the 5k supports the organization’s efforts to “free, empower and employ women.” All proceeds from the Nashville event benefit the Aruna Project.

“Throughout Ella’s college career, she has made a concerted effort to synergize her running goals and personal goals to make the world a better place,” Gaw said. “She found that she can make an impact on the lives of women through running. She saw that there was a perfect opportunity to have that synergy again with the Aruna Project. I think it fits really well into Ella’s story and the way she’s used running to effect change.”

Inspired to Serve

Two summers ago, as she returned from an injury that curtailed her sophomore season, Lambert started a run club for middle school girls in her hometown. Through “Power with Purpose,” she hoped to mentor the younger athletes and make the experience about more than running. That included organizing guest speakers for the end of each run.

A fellow Cincinnati resident, April Berg was among the speakers that summer. Berg described the initial visit she and her husband made to India, which inspired them to pivot away from safe, corporate jobs in the United States and devote themselves to founding Aruna. For Lambert, a finance major and SEC Academic honoree every semester as an undergraduate, Aruna’s mission resonated. By creating an athleisure lifestyle brand for consumers in the United States and around the world, the organization is able to train and employ victims of sex trafficking, primarily in Mumbai, India, who are working toward or have gained their freedom from sex work. The associated “freedom business” provides transitional housing and full-time employment with a living wage and access to health care.

Lambert kept tabs on the organization after returning to Vanderbilt, thinking about ways she could get involved. Further inspiration came last summer when she studied abroad in Europe through the human and organizational development program and visited De Wallen, Amsterdam’s red-light district.

“Just the objectification of women was really saddening to me, and how normalized it was,” Lambert recalled. “It’s not the exact same thing that is happening in India, but it’s similar, just for women to feel like they have no choice or maybe someone forced them into it.”

An Idea and a Lot of Paperwork

Resolved to act when she returned to Nashville, she inquired about organizing a 5k run, a frequent fundraising vehicle for the Aruna Project.

By January, the group had approved her proposal, and she began to learn that the journey of about 6,000 steps begins with a mountain of paperwork and endless emails.

Hosting a 5k run is not as simple as picking a date and telling people to show up at a particular place. Enlisting Daniel’s help, and checking in with Aruna staff, she had to manage details such as hiring a timing company for the race and police for an event of scale. Renting portable restrooms was a must, if not exactly a glamorous part of the work. Permitting and course location were particular challenges that required weeks of correspondence and filling out forms—all of this while she and Daniel were also going through track and field season and spring football, respectively, in addition to coursework.

“When I started this process, I was naive and thought that everyone would have the same reaction I did when I first heard Aruna’s mission,” Lambert said. “So that has been a learning process the whole time, understanding that I’m going to send this email to some really busy people who will not have the exact same reaction that I did when I first heard about Aruna. There was a lot of ghosting. But it’s just part of it.

“We both learned a lot about the fundraising and event planning process in general and hopefully laid some groundwork for future years of this event.”

A Team of Two

One of the biggest hurdles in getting the event off the ground was securing enough sponsorship to make it viable. These were, after all, college students trying to create an entirely new event for an organization that isn’t based in Nashville. Fortunately for Lambert, the challenge was one made for her football playing partner to tackle.

A Nashville native who excelled on and off the field at Montgomery Bell Academy before joining the Commodores as a member of the first class that will play all four years for head coach Clark Lea, Gaw was a natural salesman who knew the right people in town to pester.

“He’s just good at it,” Lambert laughed.

Still, excelling at fundraising for high school spaghetti suppers was a far cry from this work—in scope and significance.

“I had never directly fundraised for an organization before, understanding that me going out and raising money is working for someone in India to become free from sex slavery,” Gaw explained. “I had never had the conviction that, when I’m talking with a person, this money is going to change and save lives. That was really motivating. It allowed me to keep going when people are just shutting you down. That’s hard, when people are shutting you down time after time.”

At one point, when an executive asked him why he should give money to the Aruna run instead of another organization, Gaw found himself poring over publicly available tax filings to demonstrate how Aruna was more efficiently turning donations into results.

More than a Race

According to the most recent U.S. State Department Trafficking in Persons Report, 62 percent of thousands of victims of confirmed or suspected trafficking in India are women. The sheer volume of the problem can inadvertently transform victims into statistics. For Lambert and Gaw, preserving the humanity of the women the Aruna Project is trying to help is paramount. They don’t want Saturday to be merely one of so many 5k runs for a worthy cause—a cause with which many participants may not have personal connections.

“Every woman saved is not just a number on a chart released by the government about human trafficking in the world,” Gaw said. “She’s someone whose life is transformed from utter degradation and destitution to dignity and respect and a life that’s worth living.”

When participants register, they choose to represent a specific woman assisted by the Aruna Project. When runners and walkers pick up their bib, there will be a blank line where they will fill in the name of the woman they selected—reinforcing the message by making it more participatory than having the names pre-printed. Lambert even recruited friends already on campus to help her make motivational signs to display around the course, each sign reminding participants of a woman they are helping.

For once, Lambert will be among runners but not running herself—she will have too much on her hands managing race day. But she will offer a few words before participants set out.

“The biggest thing is just reminding the participants who they’re running or walking for,” Lambert said. “As our day is starting and we’re about to start this race, the workday is just ending for these women in India. Take that second and visualize what their life looks like.”

Participants in an Aruna Run in Cincinnati (Photo courtesy Ella Lambert/Aruna Project)

Just the Starting Line

While the immediate future promises to keep Lambert and Gaw busy through at least Saturday, most of their work for the event is done. That makes sleep a little easier to come by, but as their time at Vanderbilt begins to draw to a close, it also leaves their schedules open for their next challenge.

Lambert hopes to spread the word about the Nashville Anti-Human Trafficking Coalition and Thistle Farms, two local organizations with similar missions to help women locally and globally. Lambert and Gaw would like to visit India and meet the women Project Aruna helps. Like most of their peers, they’re still figuring out what comes next, but as much as the classes they’ve taken and the games and meets in which they’ve competed, the work of recent months may inform their lifelong journeys.

“Our pastor gave a sermon the other day on helping those who are less fortunate, making that a staple of your life and not siloing that into one aspect,” Gaw said. “Living for the poor and living for those who are less fortunate—that’s something we’ve been talking about a lot. I don’t want service to be something siloed in my life, where I just give away X amount of money each year and that’s kind of the way I give back. I want it to be something that is integral to my life.”

Something as much a part of their lives in the years to come as running, in all its various forms, has been to this point for two young athletes.