So why am I riding a bicycle from Edinburgh to a retro motoring festival almost eight hundred kilometres away in retro clothing? Well, it started as a joke, and I decided to make sure that joke made someone happy.

The retro clothing - for me as a modern, jeans and plaid loving woman - represents the out-dated attitudes towards gender roles in the developing world. Women and girls often bear the brunt of the effects of poverty in the developing world - they're most likely to contract HIV, most likely to be denied food and education, and have the least access to healthcare. It's a sad fact, but the reality is that resources are scarce and the distribution is skewed to favour men.

The bicycle ride? Every day, women (and often children in countries badly affected by HIV) across the developing world walk approximately 30km/19 miles to fetch water. If one assumes a walking speed of 6km/h (the speed Google Maps assumes people walk), that's five hours of walking. (I'm making a number of assumptions about height and weight, but...) Five hours at 6km/h is approximately 960 calories. That's roughly equivalent to 50km at 16km/h. So for two weeks, I'll be expending the same amount of energy as the women Care International works with.

I chose Care as my charity, because I've seen them do work in Zimbabwe - my home country - that is meaningful and relevant to the community. Too often, aid organisations come into developing countries with irrelevant solutions to the problems they see. However, I've seen Care making a difference in my countrymen's lives.

Why £5000? That's how much it costs to provide safe water for 100 classes of school children. Or an intensive education programme - lasting a year, and covering up to the end of primary school - for two girls...and keeping girls in safe schools changes the course of history.