My Virtual Cape Town Cycle Tour for Mary's Meals

I am taking on a challenge to cycle 109km - the Virtual Cape Town Cycle Tour, with the support of the Mills & Reeve Charitable Trust, in collaboration with friends from Global Trade Review (gtreview.com) who will be cycling in South Africa, to raise some much-needed funds for Mary’s Meals www.marysmeals.org . I am cycling at Isenhurst Health club in East Sussex from scratch. I am not super-fit, I am 57 , I have a busy job, a hectic family life and elderly parents… not excuses just the reality!

What is Mary’s Meals?

Mary's Meals is a Scottish charity focussing on breaking the cycle of poverty by providing meals in a place of education in some of the poorest countries of the world, currently, Benin, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Haiti, India, Kenya, Lebanon, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, South Sudan, Syria, Yemen, Zambia and Zimbabwe. This brings children who are currently out of school, due to poverty, family illness or conflict, back to the classroom to learn and develop giving them hope for the future in study and the workplace.

The numbers

Amazingly Mary’s Meals can feed a child for a whole school year for as little as £19.15 by keeping budgets very tight and by using local produce and an army of volunteers. Mary’s Meals is now feeding 2,429,182 children every school day and when I started as a Mary's Meals speaker over ten years ago the figure was around 680,000 children. We know it is working with attendance and attainment up in schools where children are fed by Mary’s Meals. But with over 67 million children out of school due to poverty there is so many more children to help.

What can we do together?

Friends and colleagues, you can join me and cycle the Virtual Cape Town Cycle Tour at home, in your gym or office and ask friends, family and colleagues to sponsor you and add to our total. Go on 109km at your own pace over a few days... we can do it!

I am already in training mixing cycling with pilates and swimming to keep moving and to build up my stamina so I can complete the challenge on the last weekend in February. I am aiming to raise at least £3,000 and am grateful for the pledge from the Mills & Reeve Charitable Trust.

More support would be amazing so together with the GTR team we could reach £20,000! Please do what you can! Thank you!

Jacqueline Cook and friends

Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving - they'll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they'll send your money directly to the charity. So it's the most efficient way to donate - saving time and cutting costs for the charity.