Thank you for visiting my fundraising page.

Please dig deep and sponsor me. This is a great cause.

I am running the Los Angeles Marathon on March 2nd to hopefully transform hundreds of lives in Uganda.

Thousands of people are living in makeshift camps with many families left fatherless because so many men have been killed. Many have no source of income and are relying on aid groups to keep them alive.

But we can help by creating a business which will provide these displaced people with the chance to earn money, produce a nutritious food and help the environment - and it’s all about bees.

This appeal helps the people in the camps set up beekeeping cooperatives. This idea has already been tested on a small scale and has proved to be extremely successful. This is because the local palm, pine and fruit trees provide excellent foraging for the bees enabling them to produce a highly marketable, delicious floral honey.

It's a project aimed largely towards women who have been left heading up their households and need money to support their children. The aim is to create a number of beekeeping cooperatives, each consisting of ten people. The cooperatives will be provided with hives, the necessary tools and protective clothing, jars and labels, as well as the training and shared facilities to produce and sell the jars of honey which they collect.

Some of the produce, which will also include beeswax, soaps, candles and royal jelly, can be sold locally, but much of it will be sold further afield in towns where it will fetch a better price and as far away as the capital city, Kampala.

The cost of kitting out one cooperative is £100 (about $200), which includes buying ten Shea Nut tree saplings to enhance the environment and make it better for the bees. The Shea Nut tree is on the IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species and we want to incorporate a project to help save it as part of our appeal. So, for every cooperative set up, we’ll plant ten of these trees, which also give the Ugandan honey its special quality.

Together with Observer Standard Newspapers in the UK who are promoting this appeal in their newspapers, the aim is to set up 100 cooperatives. This would mean providing work and an income for 1,000 people, and with an average of six people in a household, this would help a total of 6,000 people.

We are also being helped by Warwickshire-based organisation CORD (Christian Outreach - Relief and Development), an international humanitarian relief and development charity which has been testing the beekeeping idea in the Kitgum area of northern Uganda and says it’s an idea which is ready to be put into action on a larger scale.

Every penny we raise will go directly to setting up these cooperatives and getting beekeeping and honey-producing going.

The money we need to raise can be broken down by cooperative as follows:

Three hives @ £15 = £45
One set of tools = £18
One set of protective clothing = £20
Honey jars and labels = £12
Ten Shea Nut tree saplings = £5

So if you would like to help give the people of northern Uganda a means to look after themselves, a donation of just £5-£10 would be a big help.

Donating through this site is simple, fast and totally secure. It’s also the most efficient way to sponsor me. CORD will receive your money faster and, if you are a UK taxpayer, an extra 28% in tax will be added to your gift at no cost to you. So if you give £10, the appeal will actually get a total of £12.80 - that’s enough extra to buy five Shea Nut tree saplings.

Otherwise if sending a cheque, please make it out to CORD and send it to: CORD Bee Appeal / Sponsor Mike Reynaud, Observer Standard Newspapers Appeal Head Office, 4 The Quadrant, Warwick Road, Coventry, CV1 2EL. Again, if you are a UK taxpayer and would like the appeal to benefit from Gift Aid, please add a note with your name and address and a sentence saying 'Please treat this as a Gift Aid donation”.

Many thanks for your support.

Mike