Connecting cultures

Tracey Abbott’s perspective on the world first changed in fourth grade.

She entered Linda Maxwell’s Homewood classroom afraid of Russia, as it was the height of the Cold War, but as the class began to study the country and its people, she learned that she has just feared what she did not know.

“I have talked to class members on Facebook, and everyone remembers it clearly,” she said.

That was her first taste of how personal connection can open up a society. 

Decades later, she has returned to Homewood to create similar connections with students in other countries.

Since graduating from HHS in 1993, Abbott spent 10 years abroad. She worked for Kodak in Paris, Adidas in Germany and Amsterdam, then made her way to London, Dubai, South Africa and Moscow. In 2010, she moved to New York City, where she first visited as a Star Spangled Girl in 1991, to work as a corporate strategist for Foot Locker.

After beginning a two year Henry Crown Fellowship recently, she began to formulate an idea to combine her passion for not just travel and culture but also for education for girls and running.

The result is Culture Relay, a cross-cultural running program for high school girls, and she has reached out to Homewood High School for its pilot run.

Starting in February, a group of 14 girls from Homewood High School are meeting once a week with a group of 11 high school girls from Jordan. Over the course of eight weeks, they are interacting through a new curriculum Abbott is testing, and each is assigned one-on-one to get to know another girl through Facetime, email, text and other online communication. 

Nancy Jones and Georgia Miller from HHS are leading the classroom portion of the program. Abbott also recruited high school friends Ashley Berkery to assist with PR and Mega Daniel to help with fundraising, and Homewood’s Sweaty Moms Running Club is also helping spread the word.

The girls are all training for a marathon relay a few days a week, with the Homewood girls under the coaching of Danny Haralson. The girls in Jordan will run the Dead Sea Marathon relay, and the same weekend, the Homewood girls will run a Culture Relay event in Birmingham. 

Once they have completed the relay, in the second phase of the program the participants will incubate a service project and then bring their idea to life. 

“We want to create change leaders and are looking for girls who want to and are looking to make a difference in the world and also have athletic tendencies (although they don’t necessarily have to be runners),” Abbott said.

Over time, she hopes to scale the program to connect multiple developing countries with developed countries. As the program grows, she said she would love for program alumni to come back to mentor current participants.

“The race is just the start to get them on the right path,” she said. “If a girl would know more about herself and have global confidence, that would be the success. I also hope they have fun and can say they have met and asked questions of people they would have never otherwise met.”

To learn more or get involved, visit the culturerelay.org. Community members can run or help with the Culture Relay race in April, dedicate training miles to the program or donate funds.