Calling all AIB’ers!
I want to follow up on Ari van Assche’s two emails about the AIB Running Club (see below), please, and ask you to THINK BIG ABOUT WHAT ARI INVITED YOU TO DO.
How cool would it be if EVERY AIB MEMBER in some way shape or form – during the AIB 2020 Virtual Conference that started today (July 1) and ends on July 9 – did some form of physical exercise and raised money to fight COVID-19?? Can
you envisage AIB members – doctoral students, junior faculty, full professors, even emerita professors like myself – out there in the fresh air walking, running, biking, swimming – doing SOMETHING to raise money to help the world get through the most terrible
crisis any of us will have lived through during our lifetimes? How many countries and how many AIB members could we get involved if we all saw this as a way for international business students and faculty to make a statement about the important of doing something
together as a group to fight this terrible worldwide scourge.
There are multiple charities out there raising money for COVID-19 relief. A short list of some is below. Personally, I’m going to donate to the top two on the list below: (1) the International Rescue Committee, which sends doctors and
nurses into places hit by crises. (2) I’m also going to donate to the World Health Organization because the US government has decided to pull the United States out of the WHO, which is exactly the wrong policy we need now. We need a strong WHO to coordinate
an international response to the coronavirus. Your choices might well be different from mine. The key thing is that the charity needs to be doing work related to COVID-19.
My thinking is that there are lots of ways we could raise funds here. (1) Each of us could ourselves donate to one of these charities. (2) Each of us can ask our families and friends to sponsor us as we walk/bike/swim to raise money
to fight the coronavirus. (3) If you are not physically able to do these forms of exercise yourself, you could offer to sponsor another AIB member who can exercise for you instead. (4) We can also ask for sponsorships from our friends on Facebook and LinkedIn.
(5) And maybe someone out there knows a CEO of a company that thinks a group of academics walking and running for COVID-19 might just be worth a BIG DONATION and that would be pretty nice too!
How much could we raise – how much good could we do (both for ourselves with the exercise and our communities around us) - if we all tried to do this together.
Starting NOW. For NINE DAYS. If you cannot start until July 3rd, just call July 3rd DAY 1 and go for 9 days from that.
So, please join me. I’m not a runner nor a professional biker. I like to walk the golf course in the evening with my husband. We like to bike and be out in nature. Putting those two things together I think I can do 100 kilometers in
9 days and am pledging 2 US dollars per km so will donate myself $200 to this effort. I’m going to ask for sponsors also and see if it’s possible to double, triple or quadruple my own donation.
Are you willing to join us? How many countries? How many AIBer’s? Let’s do this together. One last point – stay safe. If the area where you exercise is crowded remember to wear a mask.
Best wishes Lorraine Eden ([log in to unmask])
p.s. Re the STRATA app. I signed up but the app regularly asks me to join and pay it money, which I don’t want to do. It’s far easier for me to track my biking and walking on the ACTIVITY APP on my Apple Iphone and Apple watch, and then
just enter the information in Ari’s spreadsheet. So my advice would be for the non-serious runners like myself -- skip the app and just use whatever you have and add your info to the spreadsheet. It’s an Honor System of course, but we are all AIB members and
we are bound by the AIB CODE OF ETHICS. Here’s the link to the Google Docs sheet for entering your information:
https://bit.ly/3dY3CNa
-----Original Message-----
From: Academy of International Business List <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of ari van-assche
Sent: Tuesday, June 30, 2020 12:57 PM
Subject: [AIB-L] AIB Running Club - update
Hi all,
I would like to thank you all for the phenomenal response to my message about this year’s AIB running club. The Strava club (https://bit.ly/2YRnsFu) has in no time gone from 0 to 59 members, which
will be instrumental to reach our ambitious goals of collectively accumulating 2020 km and maximizing the number of countries and cities in which physical activities take place between July 1 and July 9.
A couple of people asked me if the AIB running club is open for people who are not competitive athletes. Absolutely! The club is open for people of all ages and fitness levels.
Other people asked if they could conduct other activities such as walking, rollerblading, skateboarding or rowing. The answer is yes. Any physical activity counts in which you cover a distance.
Some others asked how they can record their activities if they do not have a GPS watch such as Garmin, Apple Watch or Fitbit. To accommodate this, I have created a google doc where you can for each day input your name, sport, distance,
city and country. We will take your word that the information is correct and will include the numbers in our calculations. You can find the link to the google doc here:
https://bit.ly/3dY3CNa
Finally, Lorraine Eden made the excellent suggestion that we can use the virtual fitness activity to collect donations for a good cause related to COVID-19. I am fully on board with this. I commit to contribute $2 for each km that I
will run from July 1 to July 9 to the International Rescue Committee at
On the google document, I have created two extra tabs in which you can indicate how much you commit and to which organization. We will once again use the honor code system here since each one of you will need to do the donation yourselves.
Here is a list of interesting international organizations:
We also encourage you to ask your family, friends and colleagues on Facebook and LinkedIn to support your virtual fitness activity by sponsoring your fitness activity and donating to a COVID-19 charity also. We would like to see AIB’ers
all over the world running, walking, biking, etc, to raise funds for the coronavirus pandemic. So that we have some idea of the total amount of funds raised please tell people that, in making their charitable donations, to add that the donations are related
to the “Academy of International Business (AIB) Running Club”.
Exciting! Ari
-----Original Message-----
From: Academy of International Business List <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of ari van-assche
Sent: Monday, June 29, 2020 9:59 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [AIB-L] AIB Running Club
Hi runners and bikers,
For many of us, the AIB running club has been an established feature of the AIB annual conference and we have therefore decided to keep the streak going by giving it a virtual tint during the 2020 AIB online conference. We have set as
a primary goal to as a group accumulate 2020 km during the period of the conference – July 1 to July 9 – which can either be run or cycled. Our secondary goal is to do so in as many countries and cities possible so that we can keep our reputation high as a
global organization.
To record your runs and rides, please become member of the “AIB Running Club” that I have created on Strava. You can find the link to the club here:
https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.strava.com/clubs/AIBrunners__;!!KwNVnqRv!QMtxfLcAcPjWu-UH8JQ7-7sBpzOj9f_OaIE1LwvrM61xGId3ngm-GT6wYCDeoA$ . Any time you record a run or ride on Strava, it
will automatically be added to our club. You can even add pictures to your runs and rides that can give some color to our experiences. At the end of the conference I will compile our statistics and send the results to all of you.
Hope to see many of your recordings and pictures on Strava! Please send me an e-mail if you have any question at
[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> .
Cheers, Ari