Eyeway Conversations with Divyanshu Ganatra
SShilpi KapoorOct 18, 2021 at 10:00 am27min
EEyeway Helpdesk
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GGeorge Abraham
00:32Hi, my name is George Abraham and welcome to this edition of Eyeway Conversations. My guest today is Divyanshu Ganatra, who is a resident of Pune and he is known for his involvement with adventure sports and training. You know, the last time we met a couple of years ago in Delhi, you were talking about the Mumbai Marathon and that you were going to participate in it. How did you actually get started with the marathon and how many marathons have you run?
DDivyanshu Ganatra
01:05Interestingly, this is through my Foundation, Adventures Beyond Barriers Foundation. So, while I personally have very few marathons to my record, the organization through which we do this and promote marathons and promote running for persons with and without disability, we've done more than dozen marathons. And we've got the official allies with Tata Mumbai marathon to make it an inclusive marathon, to make it accessible to all people with disability and to have an equal platform. So that was the start. And we started with making the 10 kilometer marathon accessible and inclusive, and we had 125 runners with disability and 125 cxo's from fortune 500 companies running as their allies. So that was a start in 2020.
GGeorge Abraham
01:59When you talk about making the marathon accessible, is it just an escort runner or an ally runner with you? Or is there anything more to it?
DDivyanshu Ganatra
02:08Oh, there's a lot more to it, so you need an escort or an ally. For one, it is to promote the marathon or to promote the event as an inclusive event, first of all, so when somebody with a disability wants to participate, do they have the opportunity to participate, many marathons do not have that option. So if I'm in a wheelchair, there is no option for me to participate in an event like that. So if I'm blind and I need an ally runner, with tether with having the medal being accessible, having the forms that need to be filled out to be accessible. There's so many small pieces that go into making an event accessible for various forms of disability, not just for blind runners. So, we look at every component of the entire event and make it inclusive and accessible.
GGeorge Abraham
03:07You also have been involved with paragliding.
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