After spending time on an athletics service trip to Rwanda in January, recent Kent State University graduate and women’s soccer team member Callie Jean Cunningham felt compelled to act.
Cunningham, who graduated in May 2024 with a bachelor’s degree in psychology, was one of about 18 Kent State student-athletes and staffers who traveled to Rwanda for athletics training camps for children and teens in the town of Boneza.
Cunningham, originally from Connellsville, Pennsylvania, was a forward on the women’s soccer team.
“While we were there, we held a soccer camp that was originally supposed to be for 200 kids, and 500 or 600 showed up,” Cunningham said. “We only had made T-shirts for 200, and we only had two duffle bags of shoes.”
The students didn’t seem to mind, as many were used to playing without soccer cleats, and enjoyed learning from the Kent State athletes. But not having enough shoes to go around troubled Cunningham.
Moved to Act
“It was so heartbreaking that we didn’t have enough shoes to give them all,” she said, “When I came back, I really wanted to do something.”
Being a Division 1 school, Cunningham said players on the soccer teams get new soccer spikes and athletic shoes every year.
“We can’t resell them and people don’t always use them. It’s illegal to resell them per NCAA rules, so I thought it would be a great idea to get folks to donate shoes,” she said.
Serving as a senator-at-large for Athletics on Undergraduate Student Government during the 2024 Spring Semester, Cunningham was able to apply for Students First Funding to help cover the costs of prizes – water bottles and Beats headphones – and then organized a spike ball tournament and asked participants to consider a donation of athletic shoes or spikes for entry.
“We ended up having 21 teams sign up for the double elimination tournament. Everyone brought so many shoes it was awesome,” she said. “The soccer team helped out a lot, so we got a lot of soccer spikes, and the football players donated their football spikes, too.”
Dozens of Shoes
A women’s softball team member who had gone on the Rwanda trip brought in 15 new pair of Converse shoes because her parents had a contact in the company who was happy to donate.
“People brought bags of shoes, not just one pair. It was beautiful. I had no expectations, and I was scared that no one was going to bring shoes and the way that Kent State came together was amazing,” she said.
Cunningham’s mother, who teaches third grade, also reached out to the parents of her students asking if any of them had any gently worn athletics shoes they wanted to donate.
Cunningham collected 123 pairs of shoes, from small children’s shoes to men’s size 12.
Help from a Friend
Once the shoes were collected, though, Cunningham faced the issue of getting the shoes to Rwanda.
That’s where Larry Rybka, chairman and CEO of Valmark Financial Group in Akron, Ohio, came to the rescue.
Rybka travels to Rwanda frequently and serves on the board of the non-profit organization, Arise Rwanda Ministries which helped to stage the athletics camps. Arise Rwanda is working to transform the community, lifting residents from extreme poverty through education, clean water sources, healthcare, economic development and pastoral care.
“Larry is a huge advocate for mission trips and provided immense support for our student-athlete trip to Rwanda last January,” said Maggie McKendry, associate athletic director for athletic philanthropy and senior director of philanthropy for Kent State.
Cunningham reached out to Rybka for help, and he came to her aid.
“Larry said, ‘You get me the shoes and I’ll make sure that I get them over there,’” Cunningham said.
Rybka said the Arise Rwanda’s American board members travel to the country often, and bring back fair-trade goods created by women in Boneza, which are sold by students and volunteers from Cuyahoga Valley Christian Academy through a non-profit store Shya Designs.
Board members always travel with eight large duffle bags filled with soccer balls or other equipment for the school children of Boneza, and then those same bags are used on the return trip to bring back the artisan goods sold at Shya. On a recent trip to Rwanda, those duffle bags were filled with the shoes collected by Cunningham, Rybka said.
Joining the Kent State Family
Rybka said “providence” was at work, bringing him and Kent State together. Active as a volunteer in Rwanda for more than 10 years, Rybka said a friend showed him an article detailing how Kent State was expanding its education-abroad programs into Rwanda, and he contacted Marcello Fantoni, Kent State’s vice president for global education, to get acquainted. Fantoni later connected Rybka with Kent State Athletics, which was planning a service trip for student-athletes.
“We put a plan together and it’s amazing how it all just happened,” Rybka said.
While not a Kent State alumni, Rybka is a new member of the Golden Flashes family through his daughter, Laura Rybka, who recently was hired as head coach for Kent State’s cross-country teams, and to help train mid-distance/distance track and field student-athletes.
Rybka said helping to support the trip financially was a small investment, for the huge reward of seeing how the students benefitted from the trip.
“To the person, all of them have said this was the most consequential trip they had ever taken, and they learned so much from the people of Rwanda,” Rybka said. “It impacted everybody who went in a profound way.”
Rybka said he is interested in working with Kent State in the future, possibly helping to sponsor a trip with students from the Ambassador Crawford College of Business and Entrepreneurship.
“You know, the most compelling part is that you think we’re going there to help these people in Rwanda, these poor people, and you discover they are rich in so many ways and have so much to teach us,” Rybka said.
‘Trip of a Lifetime’
Cunningham said the trip was a highlight of her years at Kent State.
“I don’t want to sound cliché, but it was life-changing. It really was,” she said.
Since graduating in May, Cunningham enrolled at Western Michigan University after entering the transfer portal, where she will continue to play women’s soccer while she applies to graduate schools, hoping to get accepted into a physician’s assistant program.
Once she earns her advanced degree, Cunningham said she would love to return to Boneza, where they are building the town’s first hospital, to work for a few years. The student athletes were able to tour the hospital site during their trip.
“They had to walk hours to the nearest hospital if they needed medical care,” Cunningham said, “The new hospital is going to be beautiful. As soon as we toured it, I was like, ‘I want to come back. That’s what I want to do for a few years.’”
Learn more about Kent State's Rwanda programs here: