Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

What is the challenge?

A solo bicycle trip with an average 80 km per day through Scotland for 10 consecutive days (4th of July to 13th of July), mostly living in a tent. The total journey will be 800 km. My starting point will be Aberdeen, to Inverness, to Glasgow, and then finally back to Newcastle. Please have a look at the gallery below to see the routes I will be cycling through.

What is Practical Action?

Practical Action is an international NGO (Non-Governmental Organisation) that uses their own grassroots experience to assist poor communities to develop appropriate technologies in renewable energy, food production, agro-processing, sustainable transport, water, sanitation, small enterprise development, building and shelter, climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction. 

How did I get involved with Practical Action?

I started working with Practical Action via an international development project. The project is about reducing food losses in lower middle and low income countries as defined by World Bank, using green technologies. Food losses in those countries can be as high as 50% prior to reaching consumers. From a climate change perspective, it has been estimated that the CO₂ emission from global food waste is the third highest after China and USA.

What are the global problems that Practical Action and I have been tackling?

The problems created by food losses include inducing food insecurity, malnutrition, poverty (in the most impoverished households, the food bill can account 50-80% of total expenditures), accelerated environmental degradation (e.g. over-fishing to compensate for losses). Providing renewable energy access to agrarian communities for food preservation is one of the multitude of solutions that is capable of tackling all the above problems.

Where does your money go?

For every £1 that you give, 84p goes directly into Practical Action’s operational programmes (like the one above), 15p is used to generate future revenue so their projects can help even more people, and 1p goes towards statutory management and admin. Other programmes (but not limited to), for example:

·        Rebuilding Nepal after the devastating earthquake;

·        Providing improved cooking stoves to rural households to reduce hazardous indoor air pollutants, etc.

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