Girls' program

A culturally responsive, joyful space centering identity, mental health, and leadership for girls and young women.

Youth mentors

Participants grow into peer mentors who help lead sessions, support their friends, and run side by side with the next group coming up.

Family events

Community wellness days full of movement, food, and celebration that bring guardians, siblings, and neighbors into the circle alongside the young people.

Trained coaches. Trusted adults. Real healing.

Trauma-informed coach training

Every coach mentor is trained in trauma-informed, evidence-based practice: how to build safety and choice, how to read what a young person needs, how to respond with care, and how to bring in more support when it helps.

We support our team too

Our coaches receive supervision, reflection time, and wellness support of their own, because a supported team is what makes a supportive session possible. Caring for young people asks a lot of the adults doing it, and we look after them too.

Strengths first, always

We start from what a young person already carries. Sessions celebrate effort, personal bests, and courage, so every participant leaves knowing something good about themselves.

Joy is the method

Play, laughter, relays, cheering each other on, and a genuine love of running. Joy is how the work happens, and it is what brings young people back week after week.

Belonging

An inclusive, safe space where every young person can be exactly who they are.

Collaboration

We run together, plan together, and decide together. Youth voice shapes the program.

Healthy competition

Racing for the love of it, celebrating every finish and every personal best.

Love of running

A lifelong tool for wellness that costs nothing and goes wherever they go.

On the path together, all the way forward.

College access, internships, and careers

The running is how we meet. Staying together long enough to open doors is the point. We support young people to find their passions and then help them chase them, with college trips, internships, and introductions to people who can open the next door. Both of the young people who have come through our college access work so far are on their way to college. Leah is at Hobart and William Smith Colleges on a merit scholarship, and Max is right there alongside her. They present at professional summits, sit on our Associate Board, and come back as paid mentors and coaches.

What the data shows.

Girls' program, 18 sessions

Eighteen girls in grades 3 to 5, identified by the school as struggling academically or socially. Most showed socio-emotional growth by the end of the season, and school staff co-led eight of the eighteen sessions so the practice stayed in the building.

“Previous interventions showed little impact. The growth in their self-esteem is a tremendous success.”

Middle School for Art and Philosophy

Educators report students are more physically active with improved stamina, fewer behavioral incidents, and stronger emotional regulation. Families notice better sleep and healthier food choices at home.

“The socio-emotional curriculum is transformative. These are life skills that extend beyond the track.”

Leah

Leah arrived very quiet, with little confidence in herself, during a period of housing instability for her family. Week by week she moved from the edge of the circle to the middle of it, then began mentoring the younger runners. She now speaks publicly about Run4Fun, competes in both wrestling and running, and spoke at the New York State Capitol in Albany to advocate for STEM and CSTEP, the state programs that open science and health careers to underrepresented students. A Posse Award semi-finalist, she is attending Hobart and William Smith Colleges on a merit scholarship, pursuing STEM and medicine.

“Being a leader isn't about being the fastest or the loudest. It's about being there for others and showing them they can do more than they think.”

Max

Max joined at age eight. After running the TCS NYC Marathon kids race in fifth grade she became a runner for life. She went on to break her high school records and earned her track team's leadership award. When our girls went to Armory Camp with Olympians for their first indoor track experience, Max took every one of them under her wing, and she has kept coming back: leading warm ups, coaching young runners on Sundays and through their first races, and joining our museum and destination runs as a mentor. Now a junior and a Posse Scholarship nominee, she is looking ahead to running track in college, and we are walking alongside her through the college process.

“Running in a group like this enabled me to form long-lasting, meaningful friendships, ultimately enhancing my mental well-being.”

Run4Fun began with a moment between a mother and her son. Nicoletta Nerangis, a marathoner and a Licensed Master Social Worker, had spent years in New York City public schools as a crisis counselor and knew what movement could do for a young mind. It was her son Panagiotis, five years old, who showed her what was missing. He loved to run. What he wanted was a place to run for the joy of it, with people who knew him.

He told her he would join, but only if she led it. So she did. She built a program where every young person belongs from the first day, where we celebrate effort and personal bests, and where running becomes something you fall in love with and carry for life.

What began in a Brooklyn park grew into a trauma-informed, evidence-based youth mental wellness program serving more than 500 young people a year. Panagiotis grew up inside it. He has been integral to how the program is designed and how the organization is run today, shaping sessions from a young person's point of view, mentoring newer runners, and now serving on Run4Fun's Associate Board. The boy who asked for a program that felt safe helped build one that does.

That first instinct is still the whole approach. Every young person who arrives is met where they are and supported to thrive: to be exactly who they are, to discover what they love, to be encouraged in it, and to be walked toward college, careers, and internships when the time comes. One child's voice started something that has changed thousands of lives.

Licensed Master Social Worker · 30+ years across clinical, school, and coaching settings · Founder, Achilles International Brooklyn chapter · 12 marathons, including New York City and Boston

Nicoletta Nerangis, LMSW

Nicoletta is a Licensed Master Social Worker who has spent more than thirty years with young people as a therapist, school-based crisis counselor, music educator, and coach. She wrote Run4Fun's trauma-informed, evidence-based SEL curriculum, and has built adaptations of it for girls and for LGBTQIA+ youth that center identity, belonging, and emotional safety through movement.

Her work reaches young people in New York City and in Kefalonia, Greece, including girls, youth of color, LGBTQIA+ youth, and young people with disabilities who too often face reduced access to care and steeper challenges to their well-being.

A lifelong advocate for disability inclusion, she founded the Brooklyn chapter of Achilles International and has guided athletes with disabilities through their races. That commitment is written into Run4Fun's founding values: every child can participate fully, whatever their ability, identity, or background.

She speaks widely on youth mental health and movement-based intervention at legislative hearings, community panels, and internationally, including the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Nostos Conference on Mental Health in Athens. Her work has been featured by USA Today, BBC Sport, and VOA's Sonny Side of Sports.

A marathon runner and trained opera singer, she sings the national anthem at the start of many races, then runs them alongside her son, the youth, and the community.

Panagiotis Batistatos

Run4Fun exists because of Panagiotis. He loved to run but froze at the idea of competing. The pressure took the joy out of something he was good at. When his mother suggested a group where finishing mattered more than placing, he gave her one condition: “I'll join, if you start it.” That condition is the organization's founding document.

He grew up inside the program he asked for: running the NYRR races, traveling with the team, watching younger kids arrive as nervous as he had once been. Somewhere in there he stopped being the child who needed Run4Fun and became one of the people who builds it.

Today he co-leads the organization as a coach mentor and works on strategic planning, shaping where Run4Fun goes next. He still runs races alongside his mother, who sings the anthem at the start line before joining him.