Wednesday 13 October 2010

Women take on Kilimanjaro for charity

A WOMAN from Henley is hoping to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania to help the health of the country’s people.

Catherine English, of Cromwell Road, and three other women will be raising money for SafePoint, a charity that is trying to start a safe injection healthcare programme by donating two million sterile disposable syringes.

The charity was founded by Marc Koska, who is married to one of the other women taking part and does business with Mrs English’s husband Nick, a Bremont watchmaker.

Mrs English said she jumped at the chance to become involved in the climb later this month when another woman dropped out. She said: “As well as climbing the mountain, we will be visiting schools, orphanages and hospitals to educate children, nurses and teachers in safe and sterile injections.

“Unsafe injections can lead to HIV, hepatitis B, hepatitis C and malaria and the Tanzania campaign aims to ease the burden of these diseases.

“A syringe costs just 7p. The simple message is ‘one injection — one syringe’.”

Mrs English, who has three children, Elodie, three, and twins Euan and Capucine, five, who attend Trinity school in Henley, will be climbing with Anna Koska, Clare Beale and Nicoletta Lacobacci, all from East Sussex. She has been training five or six times a week and meeting the other women once a month to do a big climb or walk.

She said: “We were advised to start working on our upper leg strength, back strength and core stability. We’ve been walking and cycling up hills and generally bulking up our legs.”

The women hope to raise between £10,000 and £20,000 for the K1 syringes, which were invented by Mr Koska.

One way of raising money is by “selling” flags to be taken to the top of the 19,334ft volanic mountain and photographed with the quartet.

To make a donation, visit http://www.justgiving.com/TheClimb-Tanzania2010

Taken from the Henley Standard


See also "Local charity SafePoint to scale dizzy heights in October"
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2 comments:

  1. I am very impressed by the amount of ordinary people who decide to use a lot of their time and effort to climb Kilimanjaro for charity and help others.
    After reading a little about the mountain I can see that going up it is far from a walk in the park. These ladies are to be congratulated on taking a break from their lives to do something genuinely worthwhile which will help a lot of others in one way of another. Wouldn't it be great if we could all do something similar and fele good about ourselves?

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  2. Gorgeous women climbing mt kilimanjaro what more can you ask for? :)

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