Nike Announces Partnership with Nala Track Club, Fueling Dreams for Kenya’s Female Runners

Nike is committed to serving the next generation of female runners, of all abilities and backgrounds. With that aim in mind, the company is partnering with Nala Track Club, a female-only club in Kenya founded by Nike athlete Mary Ngugi. Located in Nyahururu City and founded in 2022, the organization seeks to create pathways for young women to succeed in running at the semiprofessional level by providing a holistic, supportive, and safe training camp experience.

“Female runners in Kenya don’t enjoy the widespread freedoms that men have,” says Ngugi. “Promising female runners often need to make incredible sacrifices if they want to run at a high level, like foregoing schooling altogether. I created Nala Track Club to fight against the inequality I see around me.”

Ngugi’s ambition isn’t just to develop runners who can perform at the elite level. The focus on Nala as a female-only club is to show the girls and young women the myriad of professional options for them – whatever they choose to pursue in life. 

“For young girls, you can’t be what you can’t see,” Ngugi continues. “When you start empowering women to become coaches, physical therapists or photographers. the younger generation sees all the opportunities of what they can become. It brings more female voices into positions of power.”

In addition to developing runners, Nala Track Club also aims to develop more female coaches in Kenya. By increasing the number and quality of homegrown coaches at the female youth level, more girls will be properly equipped to chase their running goals. Nike’s support will partially go toward coaching development and training. Ngugi, and Nike, know that in order to champion sport for the next generation, we must champion coaches.

In addition to coaching development, Nike’s support will also help fund new in-residence scholarship opportunities at Nala Track Club for promising Kenyan female runners. Currently, Nala Track Club removes monetary obstacles for young runners by assisting with housing and education. 

Nike’s support of Nala Track Club joins a range of other commitments from the company to support female runners in reaching their dreams. For the last two years, Nike’s Project Dreamweaver supported a community of 120 women across the U.S. as they trained to qualify for the 2024 Women’s Olympic Marathon Trials. Nike provided Project Dreamweaver runners with worldclass tools through the Nike Sport Research Lab as well as connections with women’s marathon legends and Olympians, who offered advice, mentorship and companionship throughout their training journey. Last year alone, NIKE, Inc. directly helped more than 1.1 million kids around the world — 48 percent of whom were girls — discover the joy of movement through our community partners’ diverse play and sport-based programs, including running.