Every Fall, the Valor & Virtue Martial Arts Academy LLC puts on a food drive in coordination with the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona in an effort to fight hunger in Tucson. Students, family members, and friends of the dojo bring in food items that get donated to the Food Bank. These donated items become ‘Pledges’, which the dojo then works off in a group workout, very much in the same way a jog-a-thon is run. In the Fall of 2018, our dojo raised over 300 pounds worth of food items, which equaled approximately 3,000 repetitions of exercises such as pullups, situps, squats, and running. This took a group of 40 people made up of students and family members over two hours to complete, but it is through this self-sacrifice and giving that we learn to appreciate what we have, and not take things like food for granted.
