<p>&nbsp;</p> <p><strong> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p> <p> <p>Beyond the Bike - it's not about the bike...</p> </p> </p> </strong></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p> <p>&nbsp;</p> </p> <p> <p>&nbsp;</p> </p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>A good friend of ours, Stuart Block, will be cycling from South Africa to London, on a tandem bike, over the course of a year, starting later this summer - a challenge known as "Beyond the Bike".&nbsp; He's doing this in order to raise awareness of education in Africa, but more importantly, to raise &pound;100,000, most of which (60%) will be used to support the building and running costs of schools in northern Zambia, in partnership with <a title="Beyond Ourselves" href="http://www.beyondourselves.co.uk/" target="_blank">Beyond Ourselves</a>.&nbsp; The first project will be to start building much-needed classrooms at Kawama School in Kitwe, where Pastor Cephas is the headmaster (see&nbsp;photos).&nbsp; The school, currently consisting of 220 pupils, is run from a single building where five classes are taught simultaneously.&nbsp; The remainder will be split between the charities UNICEF (promoting sport for development in Africa),&nbsp;<a title="Alive &amp; Kicking" href="http://www.aliveandkicking.org.uk/" target="_blank">Alive &amp; Kicking</a> (social enterprise that manufactures sports balls in Zambia &amp; Kenya) and <a title="Right to Sight" href="http://www.righttosight.com/" target="_blank">Right to Sight</a> (helping eradicate preventable blindness in Africa).</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>So where do we fit in?&nbsp; Well, we'll be joining Stuart in August for the Zambia leg from Lusaka to Kitwe, where the schools are based and aiming to raise &pound;2,000 to contribute towards the &pound;100k target.&nbsp;&nbsp;Along with a few others, we'll be using locally made bikes that are optimised for Africa (read bulletproof, but heavy!) to cycle 400km in 4 days, aiming to leave the bikes at the school, which will loan them to the students who live furthest away, in order to allow them to get to and from lessons.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>400km in 4 days on African roads will be quite a challenge for us.&nbsp; However the person you will really be sponsoring is Stuart, who will be covering c.14,000&nbsp;km&nbsp;on his trip, so do please dig deep as this is a massive challenge in aid of some very worthy causes.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>If you want to find out more about Beyond the Bike, or follow Stuart's progress, his website is <a title="Beyond the Bike" href="http://www.beyondthebike.org/" target="_blank">here</a>.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>Finally, note that all money raised for these causes will go directly to the charities and is not being used to subsidise any of our or Stuart's travel costs.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>James &amp; Kate</p>