In July 2013 Emma, Helen, Lukey and Marc will be taking part in the first ever Travel Trade Crusade car rally across Europe to raise much needed funds for the Baleygon School, in Pakistan.

We’ll be doing this whacky road trip in a 20 year old Polo dressed as Bollywood movie stars (yes Marc too!), completing surprise challenges along the way. As a team, we will be crossing 5 countries in 3 days and in doing so, hopefully raising money for a cause that is very close to our hearts.

Although education is officially free and compulsory in Pakistan for children up to the age of 16, unfortunately it has one of the lowest literacy rates in the world and has the second largest ‘out of school’ rate in children after Nigeria. Illiteracy rates in rural areas are as women are as high as 90%.

Pakistan was the country that gave rise to Wild Frontiers in the late 90s and since then we have run countless trips and we consider this beautiful country to be our spiritual home. With the country and its people close to our hearts, we decided that we wanted to give something back and embarked on a project to help build better educational facilities in some of the most remote areas of northern Pakistan. 

In 2009 in the isolated Hushe Valley stood the Baleygon School – two rooms, 10 broken desks, 78 students (90% of whom had to sit on a hard concrete floor even in mid-winter to learn), 1 teacher, who had to teach all students from 4 to 14-year-olds, and very little else in the way of equipment.

The project started in 2010 when Wild Frontiers embarked on its first charity trek to the ‘Throne Room of the Mountain Gods’, the most dangerous mountain on earth. This challenge helped to raise a whopping £10,000! We’ve run the trip every year since!

But the focus for this year is to be able to employ a new teacher to allow more children in the region to attend school. A mere £3000 will pay the teacher’s salary and provide new desks and books for a new class.

Please give generously :-)