Ventura Marathon Brings Dunk Your Kicks Back to California

The Max Cure Foundation (MCF) is excited to be visiting Ventura, California thanks to the tremendous support of The Ventura Marathon. The weekend of September 5^th through the 7th, Max Cure team members and volunteers will have a Dunk Your Kicks booth, collecting used sneakers and running shoes to raise money for pediatric cancer causes.

“We are very excited to help and it is a great fit. We expect to have about 4,000 athletes at the event and hope to collect 1,000 pairs of shoes. I am planning to donate 10 pairs of used running shoes so only 990 to go. In addition to donating used running shoes participants can also fundraise for the Max Cure Foundation. Any participants who raise $500 through our fundraising site will get their entry fee reimbursed.” Says Ventura’s Race Director and Co-Founder, Josh Spiker.

The mission of MCF is threefold. First it seeks to fund research to attempt to find cures for the various forms of childhood cancers and to discover less toxic treatments for the disease in children. As part of that portion of its mission, it is helping to fund an Immune Cell Therapy Laboratory at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Second, MCF established Roar Beyond Barriers, a program to financially assist low income and military families with a child battling cancer. Through monthly gift cards, families are able to purchase food and other necessities. Since the program’s inception, 78 families in 12 states being treated in 21 hospitals have been helped. There are 48 families currently receiving assistance. The third mission is advocacy to increase government funding for childhood cancer research. As part of its advocacy mission, MCF was in the forefront of the #SaveJosh campaign and it’s Vice Chairman, Richard Plotkin, has been invited to serve on a committee consisting of a limited number of childhood cancer advocates dealing with the White House.

WHAT IS DUNK YOUR KICKS?

One of MCF’s main fundraising initiatives is Dunk Your Kicks, a national campaign which facilitates the collection of used sneakers by Rethink Nation, an international recycler who sells those sneakers to exporters/distributors which, in turn, sell the sneakers in emerging market countries as part of the Affordable Clothing Market. MCF receives payment from the recycler up to $1.00 per pair of sneakers based on the quality of the sneakers collected. In addition to serving as a fundraising vehicle for MCF, Dunk Your Kicks helps the environment by keeping the sneakers out of landfills (200 million pairs of sneakers end up in landfills annually) while, at the same time, creates tens of thousands of jobs globally and reduces the risk of disease in those living in developing countries who go barefoot. Dunk Your Kicks gives a 2nd and even a 3rd life to the sneakers that would otherwise end up, unused, in closets and ultimately be thrown out.

So now its time for Ventura to clean out their closets and Dunk Your Kicks for pediatric cancer causes. Bring those used sneakers with you to the Ventura Marathon or take the sneakers off your feet after the race and let someone else walk a mile in your shoes.