Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

As some of you may know, having travelled extensively, volunteered and trained in Africa as a ranger, I am hugely passionate about and sustainable community development through responsible tourism and conservation to empower, educate, improve health (especially HIV) and break the cycle of extreme poverty.

From 5 October, I have the privilege of volunteering to help improve conditions of a school in Moshi, Tanzania, at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro, home to some of ’s poorest communities, in dire need of assistance. I’ll help range of projects at the school, including renovating classrooms, clearing land for sports and recreation and building much-needed desks. This will be followed by the challenging week-long trek to the Mount Kilimanjaro summit.

I'll be doing this to support the Africa Foundation charity to support sustainable local community development.

So if Chris Moyles and Cheryl Cole can do that, it’s pretty easy, right?

Sadly not so! At 19,340ft / 5,895m Kilimanjaro is 's highest mountain and the highest free standing mountain in the world. (ie it's not part of a range but stands on its own).

I’ll hike on average 8 hours a day, for 7 days, through 5 ecological zones (tropical rain forest, heath, moorland, Alpine desert, through ice fields to the Arctic wastes of the summit) to eventually reach the peak at 5895m - planes flying past are an at altitude 2,000ft lower!

As the rainy season is about the break, we may get soaking wet every day and never fully dry. I’ll experience blinding glare and extreme temperatures, being 3 degrees south of the equator it will likely be well over 30 degrees in the day, but at altitude it will drop severely to minus 30 degrees wind chill at night.

But the hardest thing to handle, and unfortunately impossible to prepare for or predict, is altitude. Sleeping will become difficult not only with the cold but an increasingly racing pulse. Approximately 75% of all people climbing Kilimanjaro suffer mild to moderate altitude sickness, with symptoms ranging from headache, nausea, insomnia, extreme fatigue and dehydration, dizziness even hallucinations... symptoms which can be lethal if not treated properly immediately. Kilimanjaro can kill!

Whilst I hope there will be fun times too, this is no mean feat and not for the faint-hearted - this will really test limits, mentally as well as physically – and consequently the overall average success rate to summit the mountain is less than 40%.

So I'd be very appreciative if you would support me (let's hope I make it) and sponsor me putting myself through this for my chosen charity:

The Africa Foundation facilitates the empowerment and development of people living in or adjacent to protected areas in , by forging unique partnerships between conservation initiatives and communities, to help break the cycle of poverty.

Many thanks,

Vicky

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