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Mount Elgon is a 14,000 foot high extinct volcano that straddles the Kenya/Uganda border. In June 2013, I plan to spend a week climbing it.

I am not a fit man (in both senses of the word) and slightly overweight - "slightly?", I hear you cry!  I therefore expect to suffer aches, pains, hunger, dehydration and altitude sickness. Think hangover of the worse kind and you might get the picture. This will be no picnic and it certainly won't be a holiday.

Those of you who know me, will be aware of my love/hate relationship with Africa.  I have been going backwards and forwards to East Africa since the early 1990's, yet over a period of 20 years, very little has changed.  I love the people with their warm smiles and big hearts but I hate the poverty and death that every rural family endures.  Indeed, the people seem to get poorer and hundreds of thousands of children still die every year,before they reach the age of five, because of water borne diseases.

So why bother I hear you ask?

Because no matter how big the challenge is and how depressing the statistics are, tens of thousands of people are having their lives changed for the better every day. And also, because no organisation I know is making more of an impact than Fields of Life. 

Over the past 20 years, this small charity has built over 100 schools that are now providing quality education. And because of the wells they dig, the charity brings clean drinking water to a quarter of a million people every day.

The best hope for Africa is if we can educate a generation of leaders who will change things in their country themselves.  Only then will all the aid agencies be able to pull out. Indeed, there are already promising signs. The first bush children that attended the first ever Fields of Life school, are now going on to university and into careers that will allow them to influence government, health, education, finance and other aspects of public life in the future.

We will be building our new school in Lira, Northern Uganda. This is an area that was until a few years ago, terrorised by Joseph Kony (the world's most wanted man) and his so-called Lord's Resistance Army.  Boy soldiers were conscripted into his mercenary army and young girls forced into prostitution. Entire villages were rounded up into concentration camps.  When I spoke to the villagers recently at a place called Acede, the oldest man in the group, told me that they still feared that Kony would come back and take their children away again.  We want to show them by our actions, that this will not happen and one way we can do this, is by building a school, sinking wells and bringing a sense of normality to their broken lives.

I am undertaking this trek with other business leaders and together we want to make a significant contribution to the cost of building the school (£75,000).  Any amount you would care to sponsor me for will not only be appreciated by me, but by the hundreds of children who you may never meet, but whose lives will be transformed forever by your simple act of giving.

Donating through Just Giving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with Just Giving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity and make sure Gift Aid is reclaimed on every eligible donation by a UK taxpayer. So it’s the most efficient way to donate - I raise more, whilst saving time and cutting costs for the charity.

So please do what you can and donate now