DAILY LOBO new mexico
Health care strikes back see Page 4
friday
November 1, 2013
The Independent Student Voice of UNM since 1895
Dodgeball charity event to fight childhood cancer by Chloe Henson
assistant-news@dailylobo.com @ChloeHenson5 As Kyle Stepp hiked up one of his legs during an interview with the Daily Lobo Wednesday, his pants revealed what appeared to be a regular, working leg. “My whole left leg is fake on the inside,” he said. “They removed all my bone. My femur, my knee and my tibia is fake. They had to replace it with stainless steel.” In his freshman year of high school, Stepp was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a type of bone cancer. His experience with cancer inspired him to co-found the new organization, LoboTHON, which will be hosting events to donate money to the UNM Children’s Hospital. “That’s the biggest reason why I helped start this organization,” he said. “I wouldn’t be alive without that hospital.” LoboTHON will host its first event, a dodgeball tournament called Dodging for Kids, on Sunday. Participants will play in co-ed teams of six, and at least one team member has to be female. The event will take place from 1 to 5 p.m. at Johnson Center, and will cost $5 per player to participate. Stepp said the funds collected from the event will go to the UNM Children’s Hospital. “Our ultimate goal is that everything we raise goes directly to the children’s hospital,” he said. “We don’t want anything we raise to go to administrative costs.” Participants in the tournament will also have the chance to meet some of the hospital’s children patients they will be helping, Stepp said. “We’re going to have some of the kids there,” he said. “We’re going to have two families, two of the ‘miracle families.’ The cool thing is that you actually get to see where the money is going to, and you get to meet kids whose lives you’re making a difference in.” The official LoboTHON goal is
Sergio Jiménez / @SXfoto/ Daily Lobo Kyle Stepp shares his personal experience with cancer and how it inspired him to co-found LoboTHON, a new organization that will be hosting events to donate money to the UNM Children’s Hospital. LoboTHON will host its first event, a dodgeball tournament called Dodging for Kids, on Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m. at Johnson Center. to raise $14,000 for the hospital, Stepp said. But he said he has his own goal. “My personal goal is to raise one dollar for every single student on campus,” he said. Stepp said if LoboTHON achieved that goal, he would run about 13 miles, equating to “half a marathon,” to “prove the
doctors wrong.” The organization and its events are all run by students, Stepp said. “You build everything from scratch,” he said. “You build your constitution, you build how you’re going to do your event, you build your annual operating plan.”
Mallory Paige, a fundraising chair for LoboTHON, said she helped figure out the logistics of organizing the event. She said she thinks the event is important because it will help spread the word to students about the purpose of her organization. “I think it’s important because we’re trying to get people to
understand what we’re doing,” she said. Paige said it’s also important for people to appreciate how close the UNM Children’s Hospital is to campus. Stepp said students should attend the event because it is an
estimates about one in five people will pay a little extra for their meal. “It helps to subsidize a meal indiscriminately for someone who can’t pay or even for someone who refuses to pay,” he said. This system will create a sense of community, where all of Albuquerque can come to gather, said Kendra Crooks, a UNM film student who is also head of media and promotions for Food Karma. “I think if they’re initially shocked by the concept, they’ll come to realize it is a viable system, and someone can come in who has not a penny on them and have a meal next to somebody who is able to pay a little extra for theirs,”
Crooks said. “And I think that once people realize the system does actually work, it will become more popular among the poorer population, the college kids and even the artists and the well-off people in this district.” The group is using Kickstarter, an online crowd-sourcing platform, to raise $50,000 to start the restaurant. McCullough said his team chose the platform because it allows people to back the project but to only donate if the project reaches its full goal within the projected time period. He said patrons can donate to Food Karma until Dec. 18. “It’s an all or nothing, pay-
it-forward concept, which links directly to the whole concept of Food Karma in the first place,” he said “It’s kind of like surveying the community, getting a feel for if they would like to see something like this.” The project is currently 13 days into its funding, with a little under $3,000 in support, he said. The minimum donation is $1, but a higher donation will give backers some perks. For example, a pledge of $25 gets a cake delivered to you in celebration, while a pledge of $2,500 garners a private three-course meal in the restaurant for up to 10 people. If the nonprofit fails to meet its
goals on Kickstarter, it will likely start out with something smaller, such as a food truck, McCullough said. McCullough first came up with the idea for Food Karma when living in Australia and volunteering at a restaurant called Lentil as Anything, which is based on a similar concept. Though he was initially skeptical of the model, he realized how it brought people from all walks of life together, which he hopes will happen here. However, both McCullough and Crooks admitted they are a little worried about whether or not the concept of the restaurant will work
see Dodgeball PAGE 3
Food philanthropy: eatery touts communal dining by Stephanie Hoover news@dailylobo.com @StephCHoover
For one potentially new Albuquerque nonprofit restaurant, what you could pay should correspond to what you get. Food Karma is looking for a potential location in the city. The nonprofit restaurant, which is currently in the planning process, would have a counter service and a donation box, which would allow restaurantgoers to pay what they can for the meal anonymously and judgment-free. Food Karma President David Wade McCullough said he
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