Colour Run coming to Botswana

In 2012, The Colour Run held events in over 50 North American cities, with a total of more than 600,000 participants. It has therefore become the largest five-kilometer event series in the United States and this year the fun run will be coming to Botswana on the 3rd of October 2015 at a venue to be confirmed. Botswana will be the fourth country in Africa to host the colour run after South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. The Colour Run is an event series and five kilometers paint race that  has no winners or prizes, but runners are showered with coloured powder, made of food-grade corn starch, at stations along the run. Runners are required to start off the run in a white T-shirt. After every kilometer completed, participants are doused with a different colour until they reach the finish line in multi-coloured T-shirts and it doesn’t matter if you speed walk or race to the finish. The main goal is to have fun and to promote a healthy lifestyle for the participating groups or families while raising funds for charity. The Colour Run Botswana, partners with a national or local charity at each event  and contributes a percentage of ticket sales to the local charity.
“We are forecasting to have more than 10 000 participants due to the hype we already have on our Facebook page, imagine we managed to have 1000 likes in 3 days .Also people are already asking about where to get tickets. It seems like Batswana already knew about the colour run and they were waiting for it to come to their country,” the Regional Director of Colour Run International, Bright Gumbochuma told Time Out.

 
According to Gumbochuma the organizers of the Botswana Edition have got a vast experience in event management and have been partners for Colour Run Zimbabwe, Mozambique and South Africa. “All of the events co-hosted before had a minimum attendance of 10 000 people which shows colour run is internationally accepted,” he said.

 
He went on to say the event will boost local and international tourism as they expect participants from all cities in Botswana and from South Africa, Zimbabwe, and overseas. “Hotels and tourist resorts will benefit and Botswana at large will be marketed internationally as a safe tourist destination. It is open to first-time runners as well as families and children, each event has a designated walking lane. Registration fees typically start at around US$25 but we will make it affordable from P150,” he added.