What does it look like to really love your neighbor? What if your neighbor was being evicted as to no fault of their own? What if we really got to know our neighbors?
In July of 2017, 18 people from the Twin Oaks Apartment Complex were given marching orders after their property had been purchased by a national builder. Home to many for over a decade, the apartments were soon to be replaced by expensive condominiums.
Molly lived next door and through a strange twist of events ended up getting deeply involved in assisting her neighbors as they struggled to find permanent housing.
What happens next is the story of love, connection, power, collaboration, celebration and the stark realization that we need to go no further than our own backyards to impact positive change.
Molly Barker founded Girls on the Run with just 13 girls in Charlotte, North Carolina and has watched it grow to an international non-profit program over the past 18 years.The mission of the organization is to inspire girls to be joyful, healthy and confident using a fun, experience-based curriculum which creatively integrates running
Molly serves as the "inspiring founder" of the organization and has now founded a new project, The Red Boot Coalition...a project that takes the same message of authenticity and empowerment to the "rest of us" by inviting those who are willing to address the current fear, anger and hyperpolarized state of some of our largest systems: politics, religion, economics and ethnicity, by engaging in dialogue focused on the Eleven Red Boot Coalition Principles. Not afraid to ask the hard questions, Barker engages those around her with humor, poignant stories, and rich demonstrations of the power possible when people collectively give voice and action to love, compassion and curious-inquiry in spite of the perceived chaos, fear and anger around us.
Molly has been featured in countless national publications including Runner's World, Glamour and Shape. She has also won a number of awards. Included among those is the prestigious "Point of Light" award given in 2013, in a ceremony at the White House hosted by Former President George Bush and President Barack Obama.