Hello and thank you for taking the time to visit our page! As we are writing this, there’s only two months to go before the trek and we are determined to raise as much money as we can. Thank you to everyone for your support so far, especially all our translator friends for your generous donations and warm messages, our colleagues for your custom and Shona for all your great ideas! We have been working hard to raise funds and awareness; when we get to Malawi and meet the women MicroLoan are supporting, we really want to feel that we did as much as we could with this opportunity to help. Claire took part in the St Albans Half Marathon back in June and has been catering home-cooked lunches for our colleagues to raise funds. Donaji, who is Mexican, has been busy in the kitchen too, cooking very authentic chiles rellenos. She had 38 orders for this rather labour-intensive dish (it involves lots of egg white, enough said!) so had a very busy weekend but raised over £100 from her efforts. We have also set up a tuck shop in the office bringing everyone’s favourite treats straight to their desks (which our colleagues are loving and hating us for in equal measure) and have been doing odd jobs in the office in exchange for a donation to MicroLoan. Our biggest challenge so far has definitely been entering the JustTextGiving video competition. The idea is to make a video showing how you are fundraising using the new JustTextGiving service, upload it to YouTube and get as many views as you can. This particular endeavour has taken us way out of our comfort zone so now, having made the video, we are working very hard to promote it. If you haven’t seen our video yet, or even if you have, please watch it! We need your views to win the JustTextGiving competition and a £500 donation, the video with the most views wins! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrSrYkpuIXE Most of you know the deal by now, but if you haven’t already heard about what we are up to and why, please read on. We are taking part in a trek in Malawi to raise funds for the MicroLoan Foundation, a charity which is making a massive difference to the lives of women in Africa. MicroLoan's approach is to offer a "hand up rather than a hand out" and in a completely sustainable way. The charity provides small loans and mentoring to help women start businesses and work their way out of poverty. The average loan is £70 and the repayment rate is currently at 99%, which means that any donation to the charity is recycled time and time again. The Language Factory made a donation in 2010 that will cover the cost of a new loan office in Malawi this year and has made a commitment to fund a new loan office in Zambia next year. Our company is also paying all the costs of the trek so anything we raise goes directly to MicroLoan and will match anything we raise so please help us to make the most of this! We are honoured to have the opportunity to help by taking part in the Malawi Challenge. We just need you to give us a hand by making a donation and tell everyone you know about this amazing charity. Your donation will keep on helping women in Africa over and over again. Check out the photos on the left and keep an eye on this page for news about what we've been up to to keep the donations rolling in!
Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity and make sure Gift Aid is reclaimed on every eligible donation by a UK taxpayer. So it’s the most efficient way to donate - I raise more, whilst saving time and cutting costs for the charity.
