College Track Athlete 'Running With' Big Idea to Mentor African Girls Through Sport (Exclusive)

Maya Mor, one of PEOPLE's Girls Changing the World, founded Girls Run Global to offer support and life skills

Maya Mor graduated high school in Spring 2023, and during her gap year, she launched the non-profit, Girls Run Global.

“Once I get a big idea in my head, I typically run with it,” says Mor, a 19-year-old freshman at Georgetown University and one of PEOPLE'S Girls Changing the World in 2024. “I tend to get excited and want to go really fast and change the world in one second.”

The Minnetonka, Minn. native started running track and cross-country in 8th grade when her twin sister, Noa, joined the team.

“I hated running at the time, but I was really competitive. And so I was like, 'If you join then I have to join because you can't get faster than me,'” she remembers.

Her twin quit, running a year later, but Mor grew to love it.

“Running taught me things I never would have learned about myself,” she says. “It’s made me stronger and better.’

During her gap year, she planned to climb Mount Kilimanjaro and travel through East Africa. And she decided to launch a non-profit to teaching girls running and life skills.

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She worked with her first team of 70 girls ages 13 to 19 at SEGA Girls' Secondary School in Morogoro, Tanzania.

“Seeing how excited these girls were to run was amazing,” she says.

With the help of sponsors, she brought with her running shoes, backpacks, socks, sports bras, granola bars and notebooks for everyone.

"Running is so accessible compared to other sports – you need a pair of shoes. You don’t need tens of thousands of dollars of equipment,” she says. “It’s very inclusive.”

For example, she says, every girl on the first team was able to run. “Some faster than others, but it's not like only five people are allowed on the ice or a certain finite amount of people are able to participate. It's really something that anyone can do,” she says.

Running, she says, is a sport with a unique ability to teach people skills they can apply to other hard things in their life. “Whether that be sense of purpose, confidence, teamwork, leadership, all these skills that then these girls can translate into their lives and use to help them overcome the many, many significant barriers that they're facing,” she says. “Sport can be such a powerful tool for creating lasting change.”

She says it can help combat food insecurity and gender violence — but also just “bring people joy,” in their day-to-day life.

In the morning, they ran. In the afternoon, they worked on life skills. “We positively changed 70 girls’ lives," she says.

This fall, Mor, began her freshman year at Georgetown' School of Foreign Service. She is also a member of the school's cross country and track team.

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“I grew up with my mom telling me, "You have the power to change the world," she says. “It's something so simple, but my whole life, no dream or goal has ever been too big for me."

She adds: "If I can just continue finding fulfillment in what I do and creating positive change and positively impacting the people around me, then I think that that's all a girl can ask for."

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