"After the guns have fallen silent, and the din of battle quietened, then the real fight begins" - HRH Prince of Wales.

The four of us - Tom Cary and John MacKinnon (BPL Global), Ed Cornish (Beazley) and Christian Hanna (Marketform) have the honour of participating in the 2016 Business Challenge in aid of Supporting Wounded Veterans / Skiing with Heroes, a UK-based charity supporting wounded ex-soldiers through a specially designed ski-based development, mentoring, and job-finding programme.

The Challenge we face is to try to ski the longest distance possible over a 5.5 hour period, trying to get as close as we can to a maximum of 101.8km!  Oh and compete in a timed Giant Slalom!

The charity enables Veterans to regain lost confidence, rebuild their fitness and strength and with the help of the mentors (of which John is already one) to start to rebuild their lives and get back into regular employment/occupation. The skiing is just the start of an on-going rehabilitation relationship, a tool to act as an initial motivator, and we are privileged to be able to ski with these brave men and women and support the charity over this 2 day event.

Their focus remains very much on the rehabilitation of wounded Veterans and the charity has now managed to raise sufficient funds to secure a pain clinic at King Edward VII Hospital, London which has been the primary goal since the charity began in 2013.  This is a huge achievement for what is still a very small but incredibly worthwhile charity.  The injured servicemen and women do receive 'pain support' post injury but once medically discharged from service, in most cases they are on their own.  The new pain clinic will be able to provide much needed support, where it was once lacking, but as ever the volume of Veterans who require the support is simply too great the existing (albeit new) facilities.

The charity is continuously seeking funding to expand their support base and this years ski week will focus on both financing the expansion of the clinic and the existing programmes.

Last year our team was one of the top fundraisers, raising over £16,000!  The charity were so incredibly thankful and we would love to be able to achieve this again in 2016.

We thank you for any donation you can give us toward this noble charity.

With best wishes, Team Shred.