Overall Statement

Clean water, decent toilets and good hygiene should be a normal part of everyone’s daily life. Without all three, people can’t live dignified, healthy lives. With all three, they can unlock their potential, break free from poverty and change their lives for good.With clean water, decent toilets and good hygiene, children are born healthier. They get the chance to go to school and grow up to become adults. Women and men get to earn a living. Whole communities start to thrive. This is the way it should be.

Currently 663million people (10% of the world's population) live without safe water and over 800 children die every single day from diseases caused by dirty water and poor sanitation. WaterAid aims to transform the lives of the poorest and most marginalised people by improving access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene, and hopes to give everyone safe access to water by 2030.

My Personal Statement

In one part of the world, we are talking about the advancement of AI helping human to an easier living but in another part of the world, we are seeing people suffering from limited access to safe water and hygiene. As we are the privileged individual who lives near the better side of the world, we have the responsibility to help the less fortunate in improving their living standard - particularly the younger ones to gain access to safe water and hygiene as well as education to change their life going forward.

It would not make sense to the global population that we forget to help those suffering from situations where we actually have resources to improve their wellbeing. It is thus paramount for us as a community to help humanity move forward - volunteering is important not only because you are helping people in the process, but also providing aspiration to those you are helping, and influence or inspire others around you to do the same. Humanity has survived till now on the basis of people helping eachother and going through difficult situations together, and thus it is important for all of us to volunteer or raise funds to help the less fortunate!

The challenge involves trekking c.100km in about 5 days in Greenland - the world's largest island and one of the least inhabited territories. The entire trek is 160km long, from Kangerlussuaq to Sisimimut, but we will only be doing c.100km of it. There will be almost 24 hours of daylight, temperature of c.20'c in day time and c.5'c at night, and weather should be stable with occasional strong winds and rain. We will be staying in tents and throughout the trip we will be carrying our own equipments and supply while trekking. As part of the briefing note I was told to expect a high degree of mosquitos (never thought of) and water supply will be from lakes and rivers that are safe to drink untreated, as they are primarily fed from snow fields and is frozen for 8 months a year (sound like freeflow of Evian water to me).

As token of appreciation to your donation, I will certainly love to share with you the photos and stories of this once-in-a-life-time trip. Please feel free to mark me for catch up when I am back - or I will be hunting for you!

Last but not least, rest assure that all cost is entirely self funded with all funds raised going to charity. The total fundraising target of the whole Arctic Challenge is GBP500k and it will be sufficient to provide 26,000 people with access to clean water!