GECo came a few years after Moll started A Week for the World in 2023. Living in Chicago, he challenged himself to run seven marathons in seven days to raise money and awareness for the climate.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was looking for a way to combine my passion for environmental activism and protecting the planet, working with people, building community, and my passion for running.\u201d<\/p>\n
A Week for the World fell short two days because of the very same climate crisis that Moll was running to fight: \u201cthe same wildfires that turned New York skies orange migrated into Chicago.\u201d But Moll wasn\u2019t finished.<\/p>\n
The next year, 2024, he brought A Week for the World to New York and expanded the project\u2019s reach by having more runners join throughout the week and including a speaker series after each day of running. Moll, Bourland, and other athletes and advocates founded GECo in 2025 to facilitate and broaden the project\u2019s continued growth.<\/p>\n In 2026, from June 14th to 20th, members and friends of GECo gathered at 6 am each morning in Central Park for the fourth year of A Week for the World. After running up to 26.2 miles in laps surrounded by lush greenery, runners heard from lineups of organizers, advocates, content creators, and students as part of the event\u2019s daily speaker series.<\/p>\n On Friday, the sixth day of the weeklong challenge and the sixth iteration of Juneteenth as a federal holiday, I listened to the speakers (the lineup included the activist-lawyer Steven Donziger, racial justice activist and elite runner Russell Dinkins, and community organizer, EMS worker, and climate advocate Michael Magazine) and spoke with participants afterwards.<\/p>\n Reflecting on the project\u2019s evolution, Moll stressed the importance of collectivity: \u201cIt\u2019s not just an endurance challenge anymore. It really is a week of community building and a week of activation for our planet.\u201d<\/p>\n Jamilah Maronde, a GECo co-founder who has been involved with A Week for the World since its inception in 2023, was on the same page. \u201cThis started as one person, one man who wanted to do something instead of nothing,\u201d she said. \u201cToday, there are [hundreds of] people that come out during the course of the week to get involved in all different kinds of ways.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201c[We\u2019re] the antithesis of closing doors in the running community.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Amid the seemingly ever-increasing popularity of running, GECo seeks to actively resist the growing corporatization and commodification that have accompanied the sport\u2019s rise. While massive, corporate-sponsored races can often be cost-prohibitive (the entry fee for the New York City Marathon is $333 this year), Maronde believes that A Week for the World sets itself apart from most races by being free and open to all.<\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t have to pay to come run, we\u2019re using public space, our priority is making this inclusive and accessible rather than making it highly commercialized \u2026 running is supposed to be a sport that is very easily accessible,\u201d she said. \u201cYou shouldn\u2019t need expensive gear to be able to do this, yet all these brands and companies tell you that you do.\u201d<\/p>\n Moll agreed, noting that A Week for the World tries to open doors into the running community instead of closing them. \u201cThis is a free event. People are allowed to come out, get free drinks, free food, free water. We have infrastructure to allow people to run however long they want,\u201d Moll told me.<\/p>\n \u201cRunning is political.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n At first, it may be hard to understand the link between running and climate justice \u2014\u00a0or between running and any kind of social or political change, for that matter.<\/p>\n Joe Blanchet disagrees: \u201cRunning is political.\u201d<\/p>\n A GECo co-founder and content creator who makes fitness content mixed with political information, Blanchet ran his first-ever marathon and delivered a speech on the sixth day of this year\u2019s A Week for the World.<\/p>\n After his marathon, Blanchet explained why the connection seems so obvious to him. \u201cFor those who have thought about it, [running] is explicitly political,\u201d he said. \u201cWe run outside, we run in public space, we run on sidewalks, and your taxes go to sidewalks. It can be as basic as that.\u201d<\/p>\n The connection seems to go further. \u201cRunning is now a form of radical rebellion, when they\u2019re trying to limit humans\u2019 bodily autonomy, where humans are allowed to exist, and who is allowed to exist in certain spaces based on their identity,\u201d Blanchet added. He also cited how climate policy and funding for local governments directly impact the availability and quality of everyone\u2019s running environments.<\/p>\n For Blanchet, running intersects with both climate injustice and systemic racism. \u201cBlack communities are not only disproportionately impacted by climate change and environmental damages, but they\u2019re also impacted by a cultural and physical limitation \u2014 access to running isn\u2019t for them,\u201d he said, citing racial stereotypes around the sport and access to running spaces.<\/p>\n \u201cKenny showed me that I do have time for activism.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Jillian Calero is another GECo co-founder and an obstetrics and gynecology physician\u2019s assistant from the Bronx. Last week, she became the first woman to complete the full weeklong, running seven marathons for a total of 184 miles in seven days.<\/p>\n Six days and over 150 miles into the challenge, Calero told me that despite feeling \u201ca little tired,\u201d with some soreness \u201chere and there,\u201d her body was holding up without much of a hitch. The mental component seemed to be proving more difficult: \u201cThe first two days you think, \u2018Oh, I ran two marathons, but I still have five more,\u2019 which is a little daunting.\u201d<\/p>\n With an impressive amount of energy given how much she\u2019d been running, Calero then walked me through what goes through her mind while she clicks off the miles. \u201cOn hot, humid days, you think a lot about the climate crisis and how this is going to affect summer running and fall marathon training \u2026 I do think about the climate crisis a lot when we\u2019re running.\u201d<\/p>\n A Week for the World was instrumental in bringing Calero into the world of social change.<\/p>\n \u201cI have a busy life \u2026 in my head, I don\u2019t think that I have time for activism, and Kenny showed me that I do have time for activism. This is me showing myself that I have time, that I play a part, and it\u2019s also showing others that they can play a part in the climate revolution,\u201d she told me.<\/p>\n After her seven marathons, Calero plans to pursue climate organizing in the Bronx. She wants to work with members of her Hispanic community (her family is from Puerto Rico) and specifically investigate the health of children and pregnant mothers in the area.<\/p>\n \u201cThe future\u2019s bright for us, and we need to figure out what it looks like.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Asiah Quattlebaum, a climate organizer and a featured speaker on day six of A Week for the World, thinks that GECo is coming at the perfect time. \u201c[The climate justice movement] has died down recently \u2026 a lot of folks are burnt out,\u201d she said. \u201cBut we still need to continue the work \u2026 That\u2019s why something like [GECo] is super good, so we can get new people to be part of our fight.\u201d<\/p>\n Quattlebaum has witnessed firsthand how A Week for the World activates people into the climate organizing world: \u201cA lot of the runners were asking, \u2018How can I get more involved?\u2019 That\u2019s amazing!\u201d She lauded GECo for specifically targeting \u201cordinary people who are normally not political, or not involved in climate organizing or electoral work\u201d as part of their mobilization efforts.<\/p>\n But the runner-activists at GECo, the Global Endurance Collective<\/a>, are just getting started. \u201cI think the future\u2019s bright for us, and we need to figure out what it looks like,\u201d Bourland told me. Moll, who created the first Week for the World three years ago, has a simple and cheeky ask: \u201cJoin us for the long run.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/indypendent.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Kenny-Moll-with-friend-Anthony-Crouchelli1-683x1024.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/indypendent.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Jillian-Calero-Anthony-Crouchelli-683x1024.jpg\")