On the 10th September I received a truly awful call from one of my oldest and dearest friends Stefan Wissenbach, to say that his eldest son Oliver had been found dead that morning at the age of 25 in the swimming pool of the family's holiday villa. He died of what they call SADS - Sudden Adult Death Syndrome.

Oliver (also known as Felix) had travelled widely and was a musician, snowboard instructor, dive instructor and latterly an English teacher. When he died he was about to start his new job teaching in China.

Oliver and his family - father Stefan, mother Diana, sister Alex and brother Max - had already joined Oli in his passion for education by funding and even personally helping build schools in Africa through their family charity - The Magic Future Foundation. After his death they decided to see if they could raise enough money to build 100 schools in a year in his memory.

Another family friend of Oli's, Pierre Taylor, is one of the founders of a biennial ski challenge called the 'Coeur Blanc' which has raised over £2m for worthy charities since it began in 2008. When Pierre heard what Oli's family were trying to do he and his fellow organisers decided to support The Magic Future Foundation's campaign to build 100 schools in Oli's name by making it their chosen charity for this year's event..

My son Tom, stepson Laurence and family friend Matt Edington are all around the same age as Oli and had enjoyed family ski holidays with Oli and various adventures over the years as they grew up and they decided that this was an appropriate challenge to attempt in his memory. We were going to be joined by Mark Quinn who never met Oli but voluntered as soon as he heard his story and had the virtue of having represented Great Britain as a junior skier - but he managed to break his leg so he will be replaced by...Grant Leon possibly the most elegant man on skis, who has skiied with us all many times and also skiied with Oli in the past.

So what does it involve? Put simply, the team joins around 20 other teams to try to ski every single lift in the Meribel Vallee - 55 of them - in a single day. This amounts to around 75km of skiing. Those of you that ski will know how tough this is and those of you that don't - suffice to say that we expect to burn something like 5000-6000 calories over the course of the day - although if we complete the task we also vow to put some of them back on in the bar later!

We realise that post Christmas is a time when everyone feels financially stretched and there's always plenty of demands on your goodwill. Even if you can only give a few pounds it will be more than welcome and a fitting tribute to an wonderful young man and a worthy cause. To get us off to a good start the team members have already pledged a mnimum donation of £6000 and of course we're paying all out own expenses - help us raise the rest!

Thank You. Jon Little