In May I will be joining a good friend of mine, Stuart Block, and cycling on a tandem bicycle through the rolling hills of Tuscany - the hope is to raise enough money to build a school in Zambia. 

Stuart has be cycling from South Africa to London over the course of the 9 months, starting last July - a challenge known as "Beyond the Bike".  He's doing this in order to raise awareness of education in Africa, but more importantly, to raise £100,000 for 4 charities (Beyond Ourselves; Right to Sight; Alive & Kicking and UNICEF). 

 

Beyond Ourselves are helping Stuart's school, Cranleigh in the UK, build a partnership with a community school in the Copperbelt region of Zambia. He'll be meeting some students from Cranleigh en route to help build classrooms. Amazingly, £30k is enough to build a basic school for 200 kids.

Right to Sight are doing amazing things helping eradicate preventable blindness in Africa. £20 is the cost of one cataract operation in Africa.  ‘Stoking’ a tandem is one key bit of cardiovascular exercise that blind people can participate in.

Alive and Kicking are a social enterprise that manufactures sports balls in Zambia & Kenya for children to play and creates jobs for adults. We hope to donate a set of their balls to each school we visit en route, with your help!

UNICEF is the world's leading organisation protecting the rights of children and young people. In particular, Beyond the bike is raising money for the legacy charity of the London Olympics which is working with UNICEF's sport for development programmes across the continent.

Please take a look at Stuart's website www.beyondthebike.org for more details.