Van Merksteijn Motorsport is going to raise money for KiKa (Children Cancerfree) through its participation in the World Rally Championship. With the slogan “Drive for KiKa”, the team will set aside an amount of money per stage kilometer for this charity and it will approach the sponsors and partners of the team to contribute to this fund raiser as well.
Van Merksteijn Motorsport will enter Peter van Merksteijn junior in ten rounds of the FiA World Rally Championship. For his participation in the WRC he has a Citroën DS3 WRC made available to him, an identical car in which seven times world champion Sebastien Loeb won the latest WRC Rally Mexico two weeks ago. Other drivers for Citroën in the WRC are supertalent Sebastien Ogier, WRC champion Petter Solberg and former Formula 1 champion Kimi Räikkönen. The first round of the WRC in which Peter jr. will start is the Rally Portugal held in the neighborhood of Faro in the Algarve from march 24th till March 27th.
Peter van Merksteijn jr. is of the opinion that the enormous chance he is given to drive with a top car in the most prestigious global rally championship should also be used for a public cause. With millions of rally fans worldwide, he is dedicated to raise more awareness for a serious problem in the world, childhood cancer. Van Merksteijn Motorsport has linked the World Rally Championship project with KiKa, a Dutch foundation raising money for research on children with cancer who are fighting this horrible disease.
Van Merksteijn Motorsport will work together with Kika throughout this season to create more awareness and publicity for this foundation as well as actively be raising money. For every planned stage kilometer of a Van Merksteijn Motorsport Citroën DS3 WRC in the WRC 2011, an amount will be reserved for one of the 80 research projects of KiKa. At the end of the season, Peter van Merksteijn jr. will hand over the cheque for the total amount to KiKa.
KiKa
The main goal of KiKa (Children Cancerfree) is raising funds for innovative research and other activities regarding childhood cancer, aimed at less pain and battle, better cures and a higher quality of life at a later age. KiKa has decided to let all 7 academic children medical centers in The Netherlands benefit from its resources. These centers have combined and adjusted their research activities and together the centers cover an unprecedented wide spectrum of children’s oncology. It is the best guarantee that raised funds will be used fully, efficiently and effectively.