Jackie Hoffman’s Peace Runners 773 Is Working Toward Closing the Life Expectancy Gap on Chicago’s West Side

Sports are a gateway to opportunity. For Jackie Hoffman, football was his way out of Chicago’s West Side neighborhood of Garfield Park. His talent as an athlete took him to college and a year in the Arena Football League. He lived in different places, experienced life, and built a career beyond Chicago’s city limits.

Years later, his grandma’s passing brought him back.

“Coming back home brought this full-circle moment to me,” Jackie shares, “learning about the life expectancy gap, learning about the disinvestment and the socio-economic problems going on within Garfield Park.”

Jackie was driven to move home for his mom. He wanted to help her become more active, lose weight, and get off her medications so that she’d have a better chance at living past the average life expectancy for the area, which is only 66.6 years. That’s according to the Chicago Health Atlas, and it’s among the lowest of Chicago’s neighborhoods.

Running Wasn’t Part of the Plan

Motivated to help his mom get healthier and with the desire to do something to recognize Juneteenth in 2020, Jackie hosted a local 5K run/walk. That event, and the energy it brought to his community, led to more consistent community workouts and the creation of Peace Runners 773.

But Peace Runners wasn’t centered on running, at least at its start.

It was about creating a space for fitness as a community and initiating change.

An opportunity for Peace Runners to be involved in a half marathon on the West Side led Jackie into an ambassador role with the Chicago Distance Series. Bringing others along on his journey of running each race in the series — the Shamrock Shuffle 8K Run, Chicago 13.1, and Chicago Marathon — introduced running as a cornerstone for Peace Runners.

Belief in the Mission

Today, the nonprofit organization leads five programs: the Young At Hearts program, which provides an active community for adults 60 and older; a youth run club that includes mentorship; the Out West Run Program for runners training for a race; Saturday community workouts; and Big Steppa Wednesday, a social media-based workout accountability movement.

As Peace Runners has grown, the team has grown organically alongside it. Community members wanting to play a larger role in the mission have come on board to help with social media and communications, fundraising, operations, and curriculum development. In addition to coaches, Peace Runners has several mental health clinicians within the community, including Jackie’s wife. And Jackie’s mom serves as the program director of the Young At Hearts program.

“Every single person that’s joined our team has been so important to the growth of what we created,” Jackie notes. “When you’re doing the work and your heart is in it, and you’re doing it for the right reason, you’ll start to get a lot of people that’s gonna align with you.”

Running for Fundraising and Advocacy

Most of the organization’s funding comes from several private foundations, government grants, and peer-to-peer fundraising at larger marathons. This year alone, 11 people from Peace Runners ran the Sydney Marathon and raised more than $20,000 for the organization. Runners are also participating in the Berlin and New York marathons.

Personally, Jackie has five marathons on his calendar this year. But it’s not just about fundraising. It’s also about creating awareness around disinvested communities and the need for health-focused resources to close the life expectancy gap.

“I feel like me showing up as myself and us showing up in these major races and running for Peace Runners only amplifies the mission,” Jackie says. “So, if I had to run 10 marathons in a year to get people to prioritize that, to get people to really see that it’s a problem, then I’ll run those 10 marathons. It’s a purpose that’s bigger than me.”

Intended for Generations to Come

Peace Runners is still a young organization, but Jackie says he hopes that down the road, someone from the community who started running with the youth program will continue — or come back later in life — to run with the Young At Hearts program.

He mentions it’s even possible that a youth runner could return to take over his role. For him, it’s about continuing the work toward a healthier community, providing safe spaces and needed resources, and helping residents of Garfield Park live longer lives.

“It’s making sure we pave the way for the next generation and make sure our community is better at the end of this,” he says.

Below, Jackie shares more about how Peace Runners started, how it’s evolved with running as a cornerstone, and the work his team is doing toward changing the narrative on Chicago’s West Side.

How did Peace Runners start out, and what inspired the name?

Jackie Hoffman: Peace Runners started from a Juneteenth 5K …. We learned about the cultural relevance of what Juneteenth meant. And I was like, ‘Man, we got to do something for Juneteenth. We got to celebrate this.’ And I wanted to do something in Garfield Park.

We had that run, we had that walk, and it was so powerful and impactful for the community. We had about 20 people that came out that day …. That’s when the idea even came about — gaining consistency. It was more about community wellness, at the end of the day. It was more about us hearing about the life expectancy gap, seeing how it impacts my mom, seeing how it impacts the community.

How can we get this community moving?

We weren’t even running for the first year or two …. It was us getting trainers to do strength training, us doing push-ups, squats, coming to the gym and just taking space within the community and hosting workouts in the community. That’s why we still keep the name ‘community workouts.’

Even though it wasn’t about running, Peace Runners was the name that we did come up with. When I say ‘peace,’ it was the mental clarity …. Everybody knows, if you get that workout in, that it comes with that mental clarity, that great feeling. So, that peace feeling was part of it, but then also, the peace feeling was within violence prevention — a tool that we could talk about when we say ‘peace.’

We wanted to have a name that had a double meaning, that really set home on violence prevention, for the work that we do …. Public space activation is a huge violence prevention [tool]. That’s one of the top tools. If the space is activated, then violence won’t be there, especially when it’s in the positive light.

For us, if we can keep that community safe for an hour or two of straight peace — if we do that every Saturday, if you can accumulate all those hours, Tuesdays or Thursdays — and now you keep taking space within this community, you ultimately are driving down the bad things that can happen.

How did running eventually become a larger part of Peace Runners?

Jackie Hoffman: I wasn’t part of the run community. I was not a guy that did endurance sports. I was not a guy that did half marathons. The most I had ever done was a 5K.

Bank of America had mentioned that they were doing a race on the West Side, and I reached out to them…‘Hey, it’s a race on the West Side. We have a big wellness group. We want to be involved.’ They reached back out …. I talked to them, and they were like, ‘We think you’ll be a great Bank of America Ambassador.’

The biggest thing for me was, how many people can I take along with this journey? I didn’t want to do it by myself. And that’s me. If you know Jackie Hoffman, that’s just who I am.

The first year, we had 10 people, and it was cool because I had brought 10 people along with me to do 13.1 — this was our first half marathon. And then, even with the Bank of America Chicago Marathon, those 10 people that did the half, those 10 people did the marathon …. All of us did that together.

Last year…we had over 1,100 people running a 5K, [we ran] 50,000 miles, 187 people did a half marathon, 43 people did the Chicago Marathon …. This year, we already exceeded those numbers, and we haven’t even hit the end of the year.

We became a charity for Bank of America. We became a charity for New York Road Runners for the New York Marathon. It’s been huge to see this growth and in our training programs, but then also getting all these people ready for races and seeing their lives that have been changing and bringing that healing portion to a lot of people.

What can you share about developing programming based on your community’s needs?

Jackie Hoffman: When I looked at the community, and I looked at the community that we serve, and I learned so much about the history and the disinvestment within our community, it was huge for me to say, I didn’t want to be just a run club or run crew, respectfully. The work that we do is so much bigger.

We have five programs that are rolling …. We had to grow out a whole coaching staff. We’ve got six part-time employees, about 12 contracted coaches for yoga, for strength training, for track.

It’s not just showing up on Saturday …. It’s really creating a program where the needle is moving.

Providing the mental health resources, bringing the nutrition, and bringing this expertise in coaching…has been huge to our program …. [We’re] making sure that these people have the proper things that they need, from a community perspective, to be the best person that they can be, but then also provide them a better quality of life.

We have a youth run club. We had five sites this summer where we went to go teach run within our communities …. We went to these different places where these kids normally would be like, ‘No, we not running …. We just play basketball, we just play football.’

To bring a different energy to run, show them what run has been for us as adults, then take that energy and take that momentum and that fun, that joy that we brought with run, and instill that into our kids, it’s been huge to see that. We had five of those youth run a half marathon …. We actually have one of our first youth about to do the marathon this year.

I can’t forget my Young At Hearts. That’s the core and the heart of who we are as an organization. When we talk about the life expectancy gap, a lot of the Young At Hearts are already, like, 60. My mom is the program director of the Young At Hearts, so she’s 65 right now. The life expectancy gap is at 67, so they need to make sure that they’re doing something, moving, getting healthy.

Our Young At Hearts program has been huge for our seniors, especially the retirement individuals, to stay connected with people in our community, but also take space within that community from their standpoint. I feel that, if grandma is healthy, if mom is healthy, it ultimately would change the whole household.

Our theory of change for Peace Runners is to make sure that we can get every house to be healthy, or to impact some individual in this house to get them to want to change their household to be healthier, to get more movement, to join a 5K, to have better nutritional values.

What do you think about when you reflect on your decision to start Peace Runners in Garfield Park and look to the future?

Jackie Hoffman: For myself, I can’t turn away from what this mission or what this calling has been for me.

I was supposed to be a football player in the NFL. That was the goal. But now, I quit a six-figure job to do community work because it meant a purposeful life. I had to really look at myself and say, ‘Well, what’s the goal here? What are we here for in life?’

I found my purpose at 35, and I could live the rest of my life fighting for, advocating for, this community to make sure that it’s better than what it raised me.

I do appreciate the grittiness, the things that come with growing up in inner-city Chicago. But I do feel that some of our youth are at a disadvantage, and some of our elders are at a disadvantage. When we look at it, some people become vulnerable individuals because of what the community has without resources. So now, to see the work that we’re doing, to bring a light to it, to amplify, to be a voice — not the voice, but it’s so many people doing work around Garfield Park.

When we talk about really lasting change, I think that the change is going to happen from within the community.

We’re trying to fill that gap within our community. Collaboratively, we doing it together, and we all putting the pieces together. And the more Garfield Park grassroot organizations begin to connect…we continuously try to move forward and keep the positive narrative, or what our community could look like in the future.

If we can utilize the sport and run a marathon, and that can reach 50,000 people, then we want to do that. We want to be the voice for that. We want to be the voice in this field, in this lane, for health equity, for our people, for people in Garfield Park.

The narrative is always like, what’s the bad things that’s happening in Garfield Park? Let’s change the narrative. It’s some amazing people within this community, and with the right resources, I know for a fact, it’s potential for greatness, even more excellence.

I’m a product of Garfield Park. I’m a product of the West Side.

Follow Peace Runners 773 on Instagram.

“Our theory of change for Peace Runners is to make sure that we can get every house to be healthy, or to impact some individual in this house to get them to want to change their household to be healthier, to get more movement, to join a 5K, to have better nutritional values.” – Jackie Hoffman, founder of Peacerunners 773