Thank you so much for choosing to sponsor us.

On 6th May we ran 10K for a very special charity:

Tessa's family have long standing connections with Sudan, and in 1998 they opened fourteen family homes to provide love and protection for orphans displaced by the war there. Following HHC's success, the Khartoum State Government asked for their help with Maygoma.

Maygoma was founded in 1961 by the government to provide shelter for abandoned babies. However,the institution was very basic and overcrowded and the babies rarely survived. In the five years before Hope and Home’s intervention only 400 of the 2500 babies that were admitted survived.

Hope and Homes for Children, together with the help of Médecins Sans Frontières, has managed to stop this terrible pattern by changing attitudes towards adoption and unmarried mothers. Now, 1500 babies  live in loving permanent homes and 500 babies have been provided with emergency temporary homes. Many more babies have been reunited with their mothers. Alternative forms of housing have now entirely replaced the state institution in , and Maygoma will be closed by the end of April 2007.

Women should not feel that they have to abandon their children to survive, nor should they be victimised for being having children out of wedlock. Hope and Homes for Children is slowly changing these attitudes... but they need help to carry on their work.

It was a fantastic run around the streets of Edinburgh (including an arduous uphill stretch past Arthur's Seat), and we ran it all together to reach the finish line in just under an hour.  Congratulations to Gill for running it with a broken toe, but with a marathon under her belt her pain threshold is probably somewhat higher than average!

Thank you so much again for sponsoring us.

Tessa, Kat, Gill and Ben