Get Focused: Getting Young People To Read And Exercise!

Making Exercise A Currency

Meet Goldin Martinez, a fitness trainer and a man on a mission. That’s right, and not just any mission! He’s on a mission to help the youth. It all began when he discovered his passion for helping others. He wanted to create a movement, something new and fresh, but he wanted it to involve reading and fitness. When he thought about it, he said, “wait a minute…. if I like to shop for books wouldn’t other people like to shop for books? However, not everyone has the money to pay for books.”

Believe it or not, there are so many children that don’t get to buy books at their school book fairs because they simply can’t afford it. Goldin was one of those kids. So he thought, what if he changed the currency?

It’s like a light bulb went off in his head. What if the kids pay for it using exercise? That was it!

So in 2009, Goldin Martinez founded the group called Get Focused. Creating the organization from scratch was a challenge for him and he encountered many obstacles. The first one being that he went homeless. He left everything behind just to collect books to launch the program. He wanted to quit over and over, but his passion kept him going.

They took their talents to the street as a fundraiser. Each label would have the exercise, but the GoFundMe page would be at the bottom. The whole mission was support Get Focused so that they could get the program into the local schools. HIs idea worked and about a year later they were able to get into 24 public schools. The rest was history.

To find out more about his story check out the video above!