MaxCure’s “Dunk Your Kicks” – A Social Action Slam Dunk at Maine Camps

Blog post by Maine Camp Experience Guide, Laurie Kaiden. Engaging kids in social action, raising money and awareness for a cause, and having fun – this is what the Maxcure Foundation & Maine Camp Experience partnership is all about.  I just returned from a week of Dunk Your Kicks events at Maine camps where it was wonderful to see campers and staff donating their used sneakers to help fight pediatric cancer. Teaching kids about social responsibility has always been an important part of camp in Maine – helping Camp Sunshine, a Maine Camp Experience camp dedicated to kids with life threatening illnesses and their families, working with food pantries and senior care centers, as well as on environmental causes. Maxcure founder David Plotkin visited camps for events where campers and staff had a lot of fun dunking their sneakers through hoops and into receptacles.  Field day activities with the sneakers added to the excitement - using the sneakers in wheel barrow races, under/over races, and relays.  The kids and counselors also really connected with learning about how they can help change lives. Twenty MCE camps are participating in Dunk Your Kicks this summer and we had events at six camps: Laurel, Kohut, Nashoba North, Skylemar, Tripp Lake, and Wekeela.  They were joined by campers and/or sneakers from camps including Androscoggin, Mataponi, Micah, Runoia, Takajo, and Vega.  The additional camps participating in Dunk Your Kicks include: Cedar, Fernwood, Fernwood Cove, Matoaka, Manitou, Winona, and Wyonegonic. Between this and last summer, David Plotkin has visited 14 camps (with additional Maine Camp Experience camps’ kids also in attendance) to talk about how we can work together to make a change.  We collected well over 1,000 pairs of sneakers last summer, as well as during the year at camp reunions.  Some campers and staff even took the program back to their hometowns. This summer, we already collected several hundred pairs of sneakers just from the first few weeks of camp, and anticipate even more during Visiting Day weekends, session changeovers, and as kids head out of camp at summer’s end.  Maine Camp Experience partners Camp Trucking and Camp Baggage will help transport collected sneakers to Maxcure Foundation Maine Camp Experience is glad to be a part of this great cause, help make a lasting impact on kids, and teach kids to organically make social action a fun and natural part of their lives. To learn more about Maxcure Foundation go to www.maxcurefoundation.org.