Please give your warm donations and support for MSF charity runners!

We are sending this email to Charity Runners who made donations to Médecins Sans Frontières Japon / Doctors Without Borders Japan through the Tokyo Marathon 2019 Charity Program.

Hello Charity Runners! We are Médecins Sans Frontières Japon / Doctors Without Borders Japan (MSFJ) Marathon Club. In Japan, hot summer is coming finally!

On July 22nd Japan time, the 2nd phase of entries for Tokyo Marathon 2020 Charity for Crowdfunding charity donors finally opened! 300 persons can make the entry. (Nominated from the highest donations collected by deadline, counting down to the 300th highest donation. *Minimum of 100,000 JPY.) The entry period is until September 13th, 2019 5:00 pm JST. If you need more details, please click this link below. https://www.runwithheart.jp/en/entry

What is crowdfunding charity?

Field Size: 300 persons (nominated from the highest donations collected by deadline, counting down to the 300th highest donation. *Minimum of 100,000 JPY.)
Entry Period：Monday, July 22, 2019 10:00 am JST - Friday, September 13, 2019 5:00 pm JST
*The collected donation will not be deducted until the deadline date.
*The Charity Runner will be the top 300 who have raised the most donation by the specified closing date, and meet the criteria outlined below.
*The donation will not be deducted from the credit card for those who were not selected.

【Call for your warm donations and support for MSF charity runners!】

Rika Tomita, a financial officer at MSF Japan, will try to be a crowdfunding charity runner of Tokyo Marathon 2020 Charity. We need your valuable and warm support for her. Please let us introduce her to you.

Hello everyone. My name is Rika Tomita. I am a financial officer at MSF Japan. It is my pleasure to support MSF activities.

Last year, in Tokyo Marathon 2019 Charity, MSF was selected as the Tokyo Marathon 2019 Charity's donation recipient for the first time. It was a good trigger for me to try a new thing! At that time, I decided to try Tokyo Marathon 2019 Charity because I wanted to test my strength and challenge my limitation. I tried the full marathon and completed it for the first time in my life!

The decision to take part in the race brought many changes to my lifestyle.

I still remember the day of the first full marathon. It was a heavy rainy day. I stood at the start line wearing a rain poncho. I was overwhelmed by the number of runners, as it was the first big marathon event. Even after starting to run, honestly, I wanted to quit the race again and again. While I was running with wet shoes on in the cold rain, I thought, "Why am I doing something like this…." A countless number runners were also running silently in front and behind me. While I heard the sound of the rain and shoes on the wet road, I suddenly, felt I was not running in Tokyo, but somewhere else in the world where a lot of refugees or asylum seekers kept traveling to search for a peaceful place. And it reminded me of my hometown.

I was born and grew up in Tohoku, Japan. I never forget about the Great East Japan Earthquake in March 2011. My hometown was also hit by the earthquake and everything was destroyed by tsunami. At that time, I was in Tokyo because of my job, but I lost my relative by Tsunami.

While I was running and thinking about that, I felt my sadness and feeling of loss were similar to the sadness of vulnerable people who were alive at the moment even though they were suffering from a conflict, poverty or a torture. At the same time, I realized that they also had the strength to live just like myself.

Run for someone's hope.

That is why, I want to run for these people. Today, there are still a lot of people who are living in conflict areas as refugees. Even if you lose your feet or hands, people try to stay alive and keep moving forward. I want them to not give up. I want to run for someone's hope and smile.

Please support me! Let's deliver a smile to the conflict area together!!

If you are interested in supporting for MSF crowdfunding participants including her, please click Tokyo Marathon 2020 Charity official Website. You can read patients personal page on. Click here⇒ https://www.runwithheart.jp/npo/21

*Dear MSF crowdfunding participants,

We deeply appreciate that you have joined Tokyo Marathon 2020 Charity and chosen MSF as your charity recipient!

【Run for Amman Patients' HOPE】

Your donation to MSFJ through Tokyo Marathon 2020 Charity will be sent to an MSF hospital in Amman, Jordan. We will "Run For Someone's Hope" in Tokyo in 2020. We would like to introduce the voice of patients in Amman. If you need more details, please click this link.⇒https://www.msf.or.jp/marathon/support_en.html

Column: Run For Someone's Hope

In Tokyo Marathon 2019 Charity, we ran for patients who lived in Gaza, Palestine through the theme of #RunForSomeonesHope. We would like to introduce how Palestine live now after that irregularly.

Eyad, 23 year-old, a Palestinian musician shot and wounded by the Israeli army on 14 May 2018. He had treatment at an MSF hospital, then he gradually recovered! Now he can act during a performance of an amateur theatre group in Gaza City, even though he used a cane, but he could stand up and walked by himself.

Thank you very much for reading this issue of the MSFJ Marathon Club 2020 e-mail magazine until the end. Please feel free to share with us your feedback. Your generous comments are always more than welcome. #RunForSomeonesHope on your social media channels!!

Médecins Sans Frontières Japon / Doctors Without Borders Japan is a recipient organisation of Tokyo Marathon 2020 Charity program.
Tokyo Marathon 2020 Charity official website: http://www.marathon.tokyo/en/charity/

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■	Published by Medecins Sans Frontieres Japon / Doctors Without Borders Japan (MSFJ) 3rd Fl. FORECAST Waseda FIRST, 1-1 Babashitacho, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, JAPAN 162-0045