It's just under a year since I started running, and I've yet to do a proper race. So by choosing this 10,000 metre race as my first sponsored run - and by aiming to do it in under 50 minutes - I'm setting myself a bit of a challenge!

The charity I'm running for is the Haller Foundation. You'd be forgiven for not having heard of them - I hadn't until a month ago, when I visited their stall at the Camley Street Natural Park Festival and got talking to their representatives.

The Haller Foundation works in support of economic and ecological development in Kenya. They rightly view economic and ecological issues as completely interlinked, and this is reflected in the way they work.

They focus on providing small farming communities with techniques and tools that can be sustainably managed, without need for ongoing outside support. They encourage farmers to work smaller plots of land far more effectively, which in turn delivers ecological improvement at the regional scale. And they recognise that human communities, economies and ecosystems are all emergent and highly interlinked systems, which respond best to change coming from the "bottom-up" instead of from the "top-down".

When I was talking to the Haller Foundation people they were planning on doing a sponsored climb of Mount Kilamanjaro. I'm not sure I'm ready for that yet, so I thought I'd do the next best thing! Please sponsor me in this 10K run and help the Haller Foundation continue to improve the lives of communities, economies and ecosystems in east Africa.