Chicagoan Dave Coligado began running on a treadmill in a city storefront at 9 a.m. Friday and he will keep running until 9 a.m. Saturday. His mission? To raise $25,000 to pay for 100 cleft lip or palate surgeries for children in need.

Coligado said his inspiration began during a trip to South Africa.

“I saw a group of kids playing. There was one kid with a bilateral cleft, he was by himself, he had no friends,” he said. “We take things like that completely for granted. We had modern medicine, that’s automatically fixed. But there, they will live with that for the rest of their life.”

Coligado says running on a treadmill changed his life 13 years ago when he lost 130 pounds. He’s hoping to use it again to change the lives of others.

He plans to run 100 miles in 24 hours in the Lululemon store at Rush and Walton in Chicago.

The funds raised will be donated to Smile Train, an international charity that provides cleft palate surgery to those in need and trains doctors in other regions on how to perform such surgeries.

“As a mom it hurts my heart to know that children all over the world don’t have access to this operation,” said Jessica Duggan, whose 1-year-old son has had two surgeries to repair his cleft palate.

Just before 9 p.m. Friday, Coligado had raised $13,657.21.

“While I know that I cannot change the world overnight, I know that I can at least change the lives of 100 children,” he wrote on his fundraising website.

Donations can be made here.

