USA / FILE: Actor Ed Norton joins Masaai for NY charity run

Record ID: 309051

  • Title: USA / FILE: Actor Ed Norton joins Masaai for NY charity run
  • Date: 30th October 2009
  • Summary: NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES (RECENT) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) ACTOR AND HEAD OF MAASAI WILDERNESS CONSERVATION TRUST ED NORTON, SAYING: "It was just a place I wanted to go back to, so I took family and friends there. And, over time, having more substantive conversations with these guys about what they were doing , I began to see that it was a really impressi
  • Embargoed: 14th November 2009 12:00
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  • Topics: Entertainment
  • Reuters ID: LVA3ZGMY02ASQZWSFFS0DNZUNPA6
  • Story Text: American actor and director Ed Norton is ready for his next roll as the marathon man.
    The star of "Fight Club" will run his first ever marathon on Sunday (November 1), teaming with Maasai warriors to raise funds for the Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust (MWCT), a non-profit organisation, which he heads.
    Tired of the traditional cocktail and dinner party fundraisers, the Trust sought a more participatory event for the Maasai -- found in the New York Marathon and social-networking.
    "We really wanted to make it possible for people to get invested in this in a way that was very easy - literally, be able to read about it; meet the runners sitting at their desk at work or at home," Norton told Reuters.
    "You know, meet Samson, meet me a little bit more, David Blaine, Alanis Morissette, people who are running on this team; see why they're doing it, and just give a little bit of support with a click or a button. And I think we're finding that people are very responsive to that," he added.
    Though initially reluctant to commit to running the annual New York event, eventually Norton went full speed into the project -- building a team of thirty runners that includes three Maasai tribesman, amongst them Samson Parashina, President of the MWCT.
    He also found individual and corporate sponsors, putting in serious training time to be able to finish the 26.2 mile race - likening it to preparing for an acting role.
    "The kind of training you do for a certain kind of role, it can be intense. But this is a longer timeline of training; I mean this is a very serious athletic event, so I've tried to not take it lightly," said Norton. "We've all been training since May or June. It's been great, you know, it's challenging. It's had phases in it where I thought it was very difficult for me to see how I was going to get the 26 miles, but now I'm feeling pretty good," said Norton.
    With the help of a website and twitter account that now reaches over 120,000 followers, Norton has helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for the MWCT, and spread awareness through a strong media campaign.
    The New Yorker never thought he would be running a marathon on the streets of his home town when he first went to Kenya more than eight years ago as a tourist on a family safari trip. But in the same foothills where Hemingway wrote the "Green Hills of Africa" and "The Snows of Kilimanjaro", Norton discovered a new passion for a pioneering conservation project started by Luca Belpietro, "an Italian with an African heart."
    Belpietro created the Trust from an eco-tourism lodge in 1996, which employs the local Maasai, with the objective of re-investing the profits into social programmes on the Maasailands -- a semi-autonomous part of Kenya -- for ecological protection and preservation of the pastoral Maasai culture. After his stay at the lodge -- Campi ya Kanzi -- Norton quickly jumped on board.
    "It was just a place I wanted to go back to, so I took family and friends there. And, over time, having more substantive conversations with these guys about what they were doing, I began to see that it was a really impressive and pioneering model of doing community-based conservation," said Norton about the MWCT.
    "Because that's a set of issues that I've worked on a lot in my life - been very involved with at different levels - I found myself getting more and more compelled by what they were doing, and for the last four years or so I've been the head of the board," the Oscar nominee added.
    Now, after months of gruelling training runs -- having experienced shin splints and a tender Achilles, with only three days to go before the race start -- Norton is confident his physical sacrifice will reap positive rewards for the MWCT, and he will be able to cross the finish line in Central Park with a respectable time.
    "I think my ambitions for 3:20 are probably . . . I'm having to get a little more realistic. But I think I can pull under four [hours] for sure," he said.
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