I discovered Tiyeni through a friend of my dad’s, when I first came across it I didn’t completely understand the significance of the work that they do. 

Tiyeni work with hundreds of thousands of people in Malawi, helping cultivate the country, feed people, connect communities, introduce new skills. In 2021 alone they helped 800,000 people in Malawi eat two meals a day instead of just one.The reason two meals a day instead of one is so incredibly significant is fairly obvious. But the affects that it has on not just one community but a whole country is incredible. People aren’t just eating to survive, but with two meals each day they are actually getting the nourishment they need to go and build hospitals, schools, roads, shops and live a happier and healthier life! The other incredible thing about Tiyeni, that to me stands them apart from many other charities that I’be thought about racing for is that they don’t just donate food & water. These amazing people donate their time! They employ teams of all-Malawi staff to teach their extremely effective farming methods to hopefully all the people of Malawi, so even if Tiyeni were to ever leave Malawi for whatever reason, the skills that they have taught to the Malawian people will stay with them. Their goal is to end food poverty in the entire country of Malawi. 

“Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for his whole life.”

This is the work that Tiyeni does and I am honoured to be a small part in helping them do this amazing work. 

This Otillo challenge is something entirely new for me. Whilst it does have a large portion of running across rough terrain, which I’ve done before. The logistics, training and difficulty is brought to a new level with the 8km of swimming added, especially in the rough waters outside the Scilly Isles archipelago. I thought that it was a great challenge to push myself to beat, it is something new and exciting, just like Tiyeni. 30km of running and 8km of swimming, the average racer completes this Otillo race in 6hrs 32mins, that’s 6 hours of being thrashed by the waves or exhaustedly running on jagged rocks/sand.

It’s gonna be tough but good fun and as always 100% worth it.  

Tiyeni means "Let's Go!" in Chichewa! Our revolutionary new farming method has helped thousands of Malawian farmers double their crop yields, from one harvest to the next. The Tiyeni method creates taller, stronger plants, and each plant produces more food, year after year. It also helps tackle climate change.Our simple, low-cost methods, which we call Deep Bed Farming, produce such dramatic and visible results that it is spreading by word of mouth in Malawi: so fast that we cannot keep up with demand for the necessary training.

• £12 is enough to buy a pick axe to break the soil hard pan
• £38 is enough to train a farmer for life (who can feed his entire family for life, which in Malawi is approx 4-5 people)
• £100 is enough to fully train two lead farmers (who can then pass the skills onto their entire community)
• £780 is enough to provide livestock for an entire community