Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

You may all think I am mad but I am climbing Kilimanjaro in January to raise funds for a charity which is very dear to my heart.

Tanzanear is a small UK charity which supports deaf people in Tanzania and primarily Buguruni School for the Deaf in Dar es Salaam. My son Hamish spent 5 months teaching at Buguruni in 2008 and Nigel and I visited the school while he was there – we have made several subsequent visits to keep up the work Hamish started. It was flying back from Tanzania in January of this year that I looked out of the window and saw the massive shape of Kilimanjaro far below and thought “I wonder…..”.

Buguruni School is a multi faith primary school with 250 pupils. Many pupils attend until they are 18 years old, because they do not begin education until they are six or seven, often have to take years off in order to help at home or in the fields, and need to spend time at the beginning of their school career learning sign language before they can progress to the mainstream curriculum. In Tanzania it is very common for people to be at primary school until this age; many people do not finish secondary school until their early twenties.

A lot of the deafness in Tanzania is acquired, caused by inadequate treatment of childhood illnesses that should not have serious consequences. It thus tends to be more prevalent among poor families who are unable to afford adequate healthcare. The children at Buguruni School come from all over Tanzania and the Zanzibar Archipelago, because it is very unusual for a school for deaf children to be free.

The children at the school do not have hearing aids and we have established a programme to make sure that all those children who want hearing aids or would benefit from them can be provided with them. An integral part of this programme is the building of an Audiological Centre to support the children in fitting their hearing aids and maintaining them once they are fitted. The centre will cost £140,000 to build and I hope to raise a substantial sum towards reaching our target.

Your support would be greatly appreciated by me but most particularly the children. Please help them hear – they deserve a chance in life.

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.

So please dig deep and donate now.