Dmytro Herashchenko
Open World Program, Open World Leadership Center, 2012

Grand Prix Half Marathon
In 2015 a group of two active young people organized a half marathon in Poltava aiming to promote healthy lifestyle, strengthen the community and develop the city by attracting visitors. The event was the first large-scale athletic event in the Poltava, and attracted 700 participants from Ukraine, France and Italy, and 50 volunteers. Inspired by the success of the first half marathon, we continued to organize races. Every coming year we improved the quality of our events, widened the geography and grew the number of races in multiple cities of Ukraine, as well as the number of participants, volunteers, partners among local government officials and corporate sector donors. In 2018 we organized Grand Prix Half Marathon in 6 cities of Ukraine with 16.500 participants and 700 volunteers. Our high quality races attract thousands of participants from the age of 0 to 80+ years who start their distances choosing from 100 meters to 42.2 kilometers. Crossing the finish line, each one of them adds another victory to his or her life.

In 2019 Grand Prix Half Marathon will be organized in the following cities: Zaporizhzhia - April 27th in, Sumy - May 5th, Cherkasy - May 19th, Odessa - May 26th, Poltava - September 1st, Zhytomyr - September 8th, Chernihiv - September 22nd, Lviv - October 13th, Mykolayiv - November 3rd.Distances: 100 m (children), 500 m (children), 1 km, 5 km, 10 km, 21 km (including the all-Ukrainian half marathon championship in Poltava) and 42 km in Zaporizhzhia. We expect over 30.000 participants, over 100.000 spectators, and we will prepare over 1.000 volunteers. Each one of them is going to improve the quality of his/her living and promote the values of leading healthy and active lifestyle among their families, workplaces, communities, and cities. , 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and to be continued.