In August I’m heading off on an exciting expedition to southern Africa. I’m travelling with 15 friends from school and will be visiting Namibia, Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Hopefully we’re all going to have lots of fun during the trip, but for me it’s all really about the opportunities to spend our time helping out a couple of fantastic projects while we are there. Firstly we’re spending a few days at the Khama rhino sanctuary (http://www.khamarhinosanctuary.org.bw/home). The sancturary was created to protect the last remaining population of rhinos in Botswana. It was recently ravaged by bushfires so we’re going to be helping out cutting back the bush to create firebreaks, maintaining perimeter fences and assisting with the building of an education centre.

We finish off the trip with a week making bricks to help build classrooms at the Mulemi Community School in Zambia (https://mulemischool.wordpress.com/). The numbers of children wanting to attend the school is increasing rapidly and they need more classrooms and teachers’ accommodation fast!

I’ve needed to raise a scary amount of money to pay for the trip and I’m nearly there. I need one final fundraising push to meet the target and, I thought, what’s better than a litter pick? So, over the weekend of 6/7th July, I’m going to be spending twelve hours picking up litter in various locations around my hometown of Brackley, Northamptonshire. I need to buy some equipment for the pick, but anything left over will be put towards plugging the final gap in my funding.

Any help you can give me, however small, will be massively appreciated and will help me to reach my target. Thanks in advance for any help you can give me. Toby.