KIDS KICKING CANCER INC

We envision a world where our therapeutic martial arts method becomes a Standard of Care model for pain, stress and anxiety that will lower the pain of clinically ill children indefinitely. Driven by our passion to serve, we aim to empower children to move from feeling helpless to building resiliency as they conquer their pain, stress and anxiety.

Kids Kicking Cancer has a written business strategy to create new regional programs called our "TOSS Strategy". TOSS is an acronym for Teach, Observe, Supervise and Support. Kids Kicking Cancer received dozens of requests per year to add our program to hospitals and regions where we are not yet present. We use this document to explain our strategy and all costs to interested parties. Kids Kicking Cancer will not begin a program unless there is a strong local committee created to provide the 6 M's to populate the committee. These are individuals with the capability of assuming responsibility for 1)Management 2)Money 3)Marketing 4)Media 5)Medical Connections 6)Martial Arts connections.

The initial cost of beginning a program that includes the training process for the local martial artists, medical presentations and committee development is $50,000. Our document includes the first year budget and the different possible models for expansion. We have found that getting a local committee is imperative for the long term sustainability of each region.

Kids Kicking Cancer has a very strong internal team for affecting this growth. We are now looking to further enhance our core with the addition of a development director to identify further opportunities by creating a matching fund that would make it easier for regions to meet the initial budget requirements and allow us to expand out faster.

On the program side, our published martial arts therapy curriculum, a new internal blog for continuing education as well as our upcoming seminar for all martial arts therapists continues the depth of our clinical interventional skills. In 2016, we will be bringing martial arts therapists from our programs across the globe for three days of intense clinical training with many well known medical experts. This seminar is being made possible by a generous grant from the Ford Motor Company Foundation.

Since the beginning of Kids Kicking Cancer in 1999, we have learned much, mostly from the children how the power of the mind and the spirit can play a significant role in reducing pain, fear and anger in very sick children. We have systemized our regional approach to growth and have become fairly known without having any professional publicity people. Kids Kicking Cancer has been featured in USA Today, People Magazine, The Early Show, Good Morning America and in 2014 we were honored as a CNN Top Ten Hero of the Year. On the program side, Kids Kicking Cancer was awarded in 2004 the "nation's highest award in community public health", the Robert Wood Johnson Community Health Leader's Award in Washington DC.

While we are humbled by the acknowledgements, we are frustrated by the overwhelming number of children still in pain who could so easily benefit from our program, but we are not yet there.

We give black belts to children if the medical interventions are failing. On one end of the black belt we embroider the child's name and on the other end, the words "Master Teacher". Even five year old children want to know that there is a purpose in their lives. These black belts are given to the children, at times in front of their parents in ICU rooms. At other times, these black belts are awarded in front of hundreds of their family and friends.

Kids Kicking Cancer will not feel successful until we have reached every child in pain and allowed him or her to breathe in the light and blow out the darkness. We will not feel we have reached our goal until every child knows that he or she has impacted the world.