Sgt. Winston Fiore is currently touring the U.S. on motorcycle to raise money and awareness for his upcoming 5,000-mile charity hike across Southeast Asia to provide surgeries for children with cleft deformaties. (Courtest of Sgt. Winston Fiore)
WASHINGTON – Raising money for charity can take on many forms, but there is one Marine on a mission to do things the old fashioned way – by foot.
Sgt. Winston Fiore, 26, is embarking on a 5,000-mile, 11-month journey through Southeast Asia to raise money for a charity that administers free surgeries for children with cleft defects. The Bloomington, Ind., native will begin his hike in Singapore next month, circling up to Hong Kong, then back down through Taiwan and Indonesia.
Speaking from one of his stops in Tampa, Fl., Fiore said he plans to walk 20 miles a day on his journey, which he calculated as his average based on three practice rounds: A 70-mile hike through the Great Smokey mountains, a 480-mile walk from Madrid to Barcelona and a 540-mile trek from Chile to Argentina.
Those hikes also helped Fiore figure out what to bring with him and how. Instead of a backpack, he will use an ergonomic vest based on load-bearing vests issued to the marines packed with everything from a tent to HD camera glasses.
Fiore stressed that “all it takes [is $240 for reconstructive surgery] to completely turn a kids life around and give these children a new start.”
What appealed to him on this mission was “the enormous difference that such a small amount of money and such a short amount of time…can make for these kids.”
Fiore began raising money for the International Children’s Surgical Foundation in July, four months after he returned from a seven-month deployment to Afghanistan with the 3rd Battalion 25th Marine Regiment. Dr. W. Geoff Williams, a plastic surgeon who began performing cleft reconstructive in developing countries free of charge in 2005, created the foundation.
Fiore is completing a 20-city tour of the U.S. prior to his hike via motorcycle, where he is fundraising through Rotary club meetings. Fiore will continue bringing awareness to the problem during his hike through service clubs, where upon completion he hopes to raise $25,000 for the cause. According to SmileTrek.org, the website where people can donate to the cause and where Fiore is documenting his travels, he has raised more than $9,000.
Fiore said a deployment to Senegal in 2007 made him “realize how little of the world I’d seen and how much more of it I wanted to see,” he said. “I decided then and there that I wanted to dedicate a year of my life to traveling… and moreover, that I wanted to do it on foot.”
For Fiore, the charitable trip is an extension of the Marine’s Toys for Tots program, “which brings smiles to disadvantaged kids across the country every holiday season,” he said. “What better way to continue in this tradition than to embark on a hike that would [literally] bring smiles to those underprivileged children who live outside America’s borders.”