Fundraising – Kilimanjaro

For those of you on my Facebook you would have already seen my intention to climb Kilimanjaro next year. For anyone else stumbling this blog, nearly 5 years ago I decided to make a huge change in my life and to challenge myself to do something more difficult each year.

Before I continue, those interested in getting more information about the trip go here to the Whizz Kids website. I’m more than happy if people want to do this as a group!

Stay Young!

I decided to make that change because I realised we as humans have developed this mindset that we should do less and less and slow down as we get older. I totally disagree with it! My personal recommendation is do something that challenges you, every few months or every year. It will keep you young and healthy and keep your mind fresh!

I’ve applied for the Marathon and will most likely do that in 2011. For 2010 I decided that climbing Kilimanjaro would be a great way to challenge myself! I actually had this thought many years ago but it wasn’t as much a reality or possibility back then as it is now.

Raising Money

I’ve had this niggly thought in the back of my head recently that’s been questioning the whole ethos around doing an activity to raise money e.g. a fun run. There’s something about it that isn’t sitting right with me. I haven’t quite figured out why but what I do know is that if it’s not challenging then why should people give money for me to do it?

I definitely now find it a bit pointless asking people to sponsor me to do, lets say, a 5K fun run. 5K is easy for me to run now. What exactly does running achieve that warrants people sponsoring me to do it? I don’t know why but I just have it in my head that if people are going to sponsor me to do something it’s got to be something that’s either challenging, daring or totally outrageous!

I remember that I said to people in the past that if I raised £10,000 I’d do the half marathon in the Borat ‘Swimsuit’. Ok, I’d end up scaring a few thousand people but hey, if it’s for charity, what the heck! Even for the last half marathon, to make it even more challenging for me I set a fundraising target and if that target was met, in addition to running the half marathon, I’d also get my chest, stomach and back WAXED!! (Ow the pain!)

When we did our first Humili-Asian we donated all the proceeds to charity. That felt different as we were actually doing something for the poeple giving the money whereas a run doesn’t exactly provide the same levels of entertainment! Even this climb isn’t necessarily doing something for the people donating money but it is a challenge and something I really want to do.

With that in mind I will definitely do the Kilimanjaro trek and the Marathon and raise money for charity but in the future, I’ll probably do something directly for the people offering the money. For me personally, doing a fun run doesn’t cut it anymore. One of my friends recently told me that he needed to raise some money and so setup a prize draw. That to me seems like a much more ethical way of raising the money.