Inspired By Kids in 2015

Hello #FollowMeNation!




Have you ever wanted to help kids on their journey for a cure for childhood cancer? Then get ready to take the First Step and Follow Me in the 3rd annual Virtual Running and Activity event "Run for the White House for Childhood Cancer Awareness 2015."




Back in 2011 my own son Lincoln was diagnosed with leukemia and has successfully finished his treatment in Portland, Oregon last October. After cancer attacked my youngest child, I knew there was nothing else I needed to do in life except to fight back. One day in 2013, after I had become Aware of several hundred kids with cancer, through facebook and social media, I decided to go for a walk around the block one day to think about how I could help them. After walking a mile I decided to try to running, which I had not done in almost 18 years since high school, and that is when I first became #InspiredByKids to Run for the White House to tell the government they needed more help!




I knew I could not physically leave my family or actually run across the country by myself, so I asked friends to help donate miles in an effort to run nearly 3000 miles in a virtual event. The results were astounding as thousands of people joined in donating over 250,000 miles in 2013 and reaching more than 1 million in 2014!




Since that moment of inspiration, people world wide have become more aware and have taken greater action steps through this virtual event to run Passionately, Purposefully and Perpetually for the White House until we find a cure for ALL pediatric cancers.




Here are some things you need to know about the 2015 event:




-Follow Me and your 2015 Front Runners, as we host the virtual event from January through September #4OurKidsIn2015




-The Event is free and open to the public and will thrive on the donation of actual miles from walking, running, training for a race or miles from any of your official events during running season. We also accept any other activity that will be converted into miles by our team committed to counting for you in a #LaborOfLove for kids in the fight.




-To Donate miles or activities, all you need to do is Join the Event on facebook and post your miles daily, weekly or monthly to keep Awareness on the rise on our #MillionMileMission.
You can Join to get Going to the White House on the 2015 Event feed here  https://www.facebook.com/events/738936862858838/






-The Run for the White House in 2015 will be fueled by Inspiration from kids diagnosed with cancer, and we want everyone to join a team inspired by a child in treatment, or in memory and honor of the legacy they left behind, to keep us running for their young friends.




-Register to join a team and support Our Kids by hash tagging the team name with your posted activity. My example would be a unique hash tag (or the name of my child's facebook page) #RunningForLincoln. You are also welcome to support more than one child at a time, or even rotate teams weekly or monthly. If you would like to be assigned to a team you are welcome to message me on our official facebook Page here https://www.facebook.com/RunForTheWhiteHouseForChildhoodCancerAwareness




-If you are a parent of a child with a facebook page, please share the event each month and ask people to sponsor your child by joining the event and posting activity with your unique #TeamName, then let Your Kids know they have a sponsor Running for the White House for them during their treatment! It is important that the event is backed by the online childhood cancer community through social media as a virtual ongoing event.




-Invite ALL of your friends on your friends list. While its true not every last person will join, they will at least become Aware of the event and the support you have for the children and they may just want to LIKE our facebook page and watch as the event takes place.




-Use some of the unique hash tags in this blog post to link our posts together and increase awareness in every corner of our virtual universe.




-Have fun and get to know other people who are Running for the White House with you, and if anyone wants to join us in D.C. keep watching for when and where we will be in September.
-Watch for Challenges along the way to help increase awareness and invite more friends to join in completing these challenges.
-Follow your 2015 Front Runners by posting #FollowBrian #FollowKelly or #FollowSabrina and help them earn Badges during the final 10 weeks of the event, beginning July 12th, leading up to the White House. You may also nominate a Front Runner and we will track their activity for you.






Thanks for Joining, Inviting and Supporting all of Our Kids in 2015! See you in September at the White House!




Brian Jones - Host of the Run for the White House for Childhood Cancer Awareness
Join early starting Sunday 12/28 here!  https://www.facebook.com/events/738936862858838/

50 Days to the White House

Today begins the final 50 days on the road to the White House in an epic year of running and creating activity that is raising awareness for Our Kids.

Our efforts to donate a million miles in this virtual event has reached all 50 states and many other countries in what has been dubbed the "Follow Me" movement, to let the most powerful nation on earth know that we need more research for kids fighting for life from the #1 killer by disease. On September 21st the virtual finish line will be reached when people all over the country and beyond will join together in Washington D.C. at CureFest 2014. If you plan on attending this amazing event and join us in the final lap to the White House please register through the CureFest web site here http://www.curefestdc.org/ and follow the facebook page here https://www.facebook.com/curefestdc

As the host of the Run for the White House for Childhood Cancer Awareness, I will lead the way starting August 3rd for the final 50 days. Each day I will call out a state and ask people in that state to post their miles, share their stories and join me in a virtual tour of all 50 states until I arrive in DC in September. We will run together and donate as many awareness miles as possible to reach 1,000,000 by the end of September, but if we work hard we can finish by the time I reach the White House on the 21st which is an average of about 4000 miles per day.

I finished my first event in July riding 65 miles for the cystic fibrosis foundation, and in August I will be running the Hood to Coast relay here in Oregon. September I will run to the White House and sometime in between I will hope to join my friends at Miles to Give during their 10,000 mile tour this year. I will finish my running events in October with the Portland half marathon which includes my fundraiser for the Children's Cancer Association for my charity bib. Please consider a contribution on my fundraising page here http://www.active.com/donate/CCA2014/followme2014

Keep hope alive for #OurKids #OnTheWayToTheWhiteHouse #UntilTheyLightTheWhiteHouseGOLD and #EliminateTheThreat #DontBeAFoolBeAWARE #NotFairNotRare #StepUp #50DaysToTheWhiteHouse #GoldenBaton #FollowMeIn2013 #InspiredByKids

Inspired By Kids in 2014

In 2011 when my son Lincoln was diagnosed with leukemia, a form of childhood cancer, my world was changed forever. I was one of those people who were unaware of the fact that kids are threatened every day by this relentless disease. After a few months of eye opening and heart wrenching facts about the devastation of this disease, and lack of funding for pediatric cancer research, I relinquished all of my fears and faced this giant in battle by sharing our son's story to raise awareness with friends through social media. Later in 2012 I began to see some of my friends posting their miles on facebook and I started to think about running again. In January 2013 I started running and asked some of my friends if we could add up our miles together to see if we could run 2900 in a virtual cross country tour to the White House. I would track our activity in a facebook event in hopes that we could complete the tour by September.

As the story goes, we not only ran 2900 miles, but as the event developed over the year and over 3500 people joined the virtual tour, I booked a flight and joined the same number of friends that began the journey and finished the tour in front of the White House, with over a quarter of a million childhood cancer awareness raising miles!

The event that concluded on September 1st, 2013 would begin again at the strike of midnight on January 1st, 2014 with a goal of 1,000,000 awareness raising miles by September, where we would again meet in front of the White House again during CureFest 2014.

Last year as we approached the final 50 days before we reached the White House, I lead out as the host of this virtual event to try to get as many people to Follow Me in raising awareness until I reached the end. This year I will extend this challenge to run 100 days (including some biking and other activities) to all of those who have joined the event in our pursuit of reaching our 1 million mile goal. I will arrive at the White House on Sunday September 21st during the CureFest event to join hundreds of people in raising awareness before our government, and our countries leaders.

As I lead out in the 2014 event, I will be running and cycling in a number of races to raise awareness and donations to help our kids in their time of need. I will be looking for sponsors all across the country to support me and my vision for the event this year. One of the fundraisers I am doing this year during the Oregon marathon is for the Children's Cancer Association. The CCA has been there for my son since the very beginning of his journey and his Chemo Pal has been there for almost every appointment. My fundraising goal for the CCA is $2014 to help bring joy to our kids in the fight every day. Here is the link to my fundraiser to help me reach my goal by the end of September. http://www.active.com/donate/CCA2014/followme2014
I will also be running the Oregon Hood to Coast Relay, the Washington CF Cycle for Life and the final Run to the White House in the coming months to donate more miles to the event.

I want to keep inspiration my motivation for running these races and if you would like me to dedicate a day to your child, send a picture or share your story, you can email me at ricksson33@yahoo.com with the subject Inspired By Kids.  If you would also like to sponsor me with any shirts, awareness wrist bands or other items from your organization, I would be happy to wear them during the virtual event and share pictures for your child, or childhood cancer organization. My shipping address is 9195 Portland RD NE, Salem OR 97305. If you would like to donate in any other way, please email me at ricksson33@yahoo.com

I am looking forward to the 100 day countdown starting June 14th, to reach the White House in 2014 and to see all of those leading the way in this movement to make childhood cancer research a National Priority!

https://www.facebook.com/curefestdc

Champions in Awareness

I don't know about you, but I am really looking forward to the Super Bowl this year, when two proven champions meet for the final battle of the season. Although my favorite team will not be playing in this match up, they will be preparing for the next time they will face the winner of this great contest next fall. Now because I have always been in the Great Pacific North West and I lived in Washington growing up, I favor the home team and I feel the excitement of the "12th man" all across the country. Being a part of a team that has worked hard enough to earn a championship is an amazing feeling, and being a fan is almost just as good when it comes down to seeing our team facing a gladiator of an opponent in the arena. There are few things that compare to an experience like the thrill of scoring just enough points to bring down the opposing giant.




This year there is a new Champion coming to your town. The 2014 virtual event "Run to the White House for Childhood Cancer Awareness" has teams of people joining to run together to raise the bar on raising awareness, in an effort to defeat their one an only opponent, childhood cancer. As new people join us, often times parents dedicating their miles to their own children facing a cancer diagnosis, we want to welcome each team to join together in this effort to give as many miles as possible each month all the way through September. The goal of raising awareness and running a million miles together in this event, will be getting those in our government to see people who are passionately trying to end the threat in their own children's lives. Its like a living, breathing, willing to sacrifice and take action, petition to turn our White House GOLD IN September, by taking steps in awareness all across the country to the let the voices of Our Kids be heard.




We will want to join together by getting everyone on a team this year, dedicating every step to a child who is currently in treatment. We will need to see you post your miles or time each day with your team name and state. It can look as simple as this "5 miles for #RunningForLincoln in OR." We are trying to get people to use the Facebook hash tag feature, because we know someday we could have hundreds if not thousands of people trending their teams on facebook and possibly twitter in the future. If you don't know any kids, we can assign you to a team, and for those who want to randomly dedicate to many other children, you will be assigned to #TeamFollowMe. You are also welcome to support different teams at different times, but it would work best if you changed teams to do this on the first of the month.


February will be our team building month, so invite your friends to be a part of your teams, who will prove to be Champions in Awareness for childhood cancer in the 2014 Run to the White House.


Click here to Join today and I will give everyone who joins in February a mile for joining a Team and posting their State. https://www.facebook.com/events/514823015291839/

#BeHopeful in 2014

I wanted to take a few minutes tonight, as the host of the Run to the White House, to share why I am running in 2014. I wasn't much of a runner in 2013, or at least until January 25 when this new chapter in my life began. You see, in 2011 my own son Lincoln was diagnosed with ALL (leukemia) or in other words a monster who threaten my son's life. Don't think I was just going to stand by and let cancer take over with out a fight (literally the only fight I have ever been in) During 2011 and 2012 as my son went through his first year of treatment, my eyes were opened to the universe of childhood cancers. Then on day as I was walking the halls of our hospital during an appointment, I became aware of a child I had been following on facebook, who had passed away in a room nearby. Between the threat on my own son, and the reality that children were being lost to the monster, I knew it was my turn to face my fears face to face. I began to follow more and more families until I lost count of how many there were. I couldn't keep my eyes shut anymore to their world, and it became mine too. I wanted to do more to raise awareness, but I didn't know what. Then I got this crazy idea in my head to run across the country as a 2013 new years resolution. I ended up traveling from Oregon to Idaho and realized I still had not run 3 miles, and 599 miles in the snow only scratched the surface of a 3000 mile journey. Then in the dead of winter I decided I was going to start walking around the block a mile at a time. It must have been ten years, but I realized that I could still run and walking wasn't quite enough for me. Then I asked some friends if they would be interested in doing a virtual run, and I would call it the Run to the White House. Word got going quick and 50 people became 500. I was running 5 miles now looking forward to 7 and 10 and possibly my first half marathon. I asked the group if they would like to wear running shirts, and the Follow Me movement began. After running right off the maps I was creating and around the world a few times, it was time to make a decision: how am I going to get to the White House??? It didn't take long and I had my tickets booked, and the best part was that I was going to meet many who had been running with me at CureFest 2013 in Washington DC.


The 2014 event is already off to an Epic start and its only going to get bigger as you keep inspired by the kids you are running for. In the next week or two, ask yourself what you will do to help kids fight cancer. Some will run, others walk and many will even watch this even as we reach for a million miles by September. Will you Follow Me to the White House again to let our government know that childhood cancer is not rare and deserves more? Its as easy as joining the event and giving a few miles, or as many as you can this year, and even if you don't log one mile, you can invite all of your friends and ask them to sponsor a child with cancer by donating miles. The Run for the White House will blaze a trail across this country again in 2014 because we haven't given up hope for Our Kids. Be inspired, be active and #BeHopeful as you run this year. Thank you all, and God Bless our children!