Students and local residents can walk for a good cause this Sunday at the first-ever Kidney Walk at Binghamton University, which is sponsored by the National Kidney Foundation (NKF) and will be located in the East Gym.

The check-in for the Kidney Walk will begin at 10 a.m. at the East Gym. There is no registration fee for the walk and participants are welcome to sign up individually or as a team until the event starts at 11 a.m.

“We had an active committee of volunteers at the University who were dedicated to bringing the Kidney Walk to the Binghamton area,” said Laura Squadrito, director of programs and kidney walks at the NKF of Central New York.

WHRW, which is BU’s campus radio station, Visions Federal Credit Union, the Vestal Dialysis Unit and residents of the Greater Binghamton area are among the local sponsors attending the kidney walk.

In 2008, as many as 700 people attended six Kidney Walks around the state of New York and were able to raise $75,000, according to cnykidney.org, a Web site through the NKF of Central N.Y.

Also according to the site, more than 81 cents of every dollar of all the money earned from the event will go toward kidney research to identify more treatments, as well as public and professional education programs to raise awareness of the desperate need for organ donors.

Binghamton University was chosen as the site of Saturday’s Kidney Walk because of its easy accessibility and central location, Squadrito said.

One of the participating teams at Saturday’s Kidney Walk will be “Kidneys (R) Us,” led by Lisa Perry, a certified nephrology nurse at the Vestal Dialysis Unit.

“[The walk] will raise money for transportation, medicine and emergency funds for patients,” Perry said. “Because we are a dialysis unit, it’s important for us to support anything that benefits the patients.”

Perry will be joined by about 14 of her fellow unit members, patients and supporters. The team is taking donations and collecting funds at their dialysis clinic, located on Jensen Road in Vestal.

If students are unable to attend the walk but would still like to contribute to the cause, donations can be made directly to BU’s walk online at cnykidney.org.