It’s only been a few weeks since the start of RIPPLE Africa’s March to Malawi initiative, and already the event is proving to be a big success. 42 parties (made up of individuals, couples, and groups) have now signed up to walk their share of the 8474 mile distance to Malawi, and fundraise their way to the joint goal of £20,000 for RIPPLE Africa. Our amazing group of participants come from all over the world, with our volunteer walkers hailing from England, Scotland, Ireland, the USA, Canada, Germany, Australia, Gibraltar, Malta, and even Malawi! There are lots of really special people pitching in for this amazing fundraiser, and to start a series of special profile features on our participants, we are focusing first on our very biggest group: “Malta March to Malawi Challenge.”

The Malta connection began with Francesca Bianchi, who is one of RIPPLE’s long term supporters and advocates. Francesca has been an active part of the RIPPLE Africa family for many years now. When she heard about the March to Malawi challenge, she felt inspired to get her friends to participate but worried that the close shared community in Malta would mean too many mutual friends asking the same people for sponsorship. Instead, she created the “Malta March to Malawi Challenge” made up of a group of special women in Malta, with its own unique fundraising strategy. The group aims to meet a couple times a month for fun walks in the beautiful Maltese countryside, and anyone can join in on a walk in return for a five euro donation. The group’s first walk took place on the 16th of March, and was a tremendous success.

“To get this started, Muccia Manduca and Gabi Mizzi really helped to get the hype going and create awareness, all this was done through Facebook. The first event was a great success with 33 ladies and 2 dogs, everyone was really generous,” Francesca said of the event. “Special recognition goes to Corinne Camilleri who donated 200 euro, Christine Salomone who collected £180, Annelise from Noddy’s School– 100 euro, Tania Cluett brought her exercise class over to join the walk instead of working out in the studio and she donated her fees of 230 euro, Michelle Vella Distephano donated 75 euro many others donated 5, 10, 20 or 50 euro! I was very, very impressed at the success and the generosity of the Maltese people. We walked around 7km in the beautiful Mtahleb countryside. Here in Malta we’re rather lazy, so the aim is to walk a little, talk a lot and donate whatever we can, with the emphasis of creating awareness and money for Ripple Africa.” The picture of women is from the first ever Malta March to Malawi walk, and pictured is Muccia, Gabi, Janine, Joan, Paula, Giselle, Mary, Audrey, Angie, Ghilsaine, Joanna, Melanie, Beatrice, Maryanne, Tania, Veronica, Deirdre, Annelise, Rachel, Roberta, Nikki, Rosie, Phyllis, Victoria, Corinne, Michelle, Julie, Mattie, Angele, Inger, Annemarie, Julia, dogs Buddy and Holly, and Francesca.

The fantastic thing about the Malta March to Malawi Challenge, is that this amazing group of women have taken a theme in which over 40 different parties are participating around the world, and have really made it their own. Not only is the Malta group the single biggest “participant” on our list, but they have been the most original in their thinking, and the most inclusive in their activity. They have already managed to raise £1632 in total, in just the first three weeks of activity! If you feel as inspired by this group as we do, consider making a donation to their efforts, or adopting some of their ideas in your own fundraising techniques. For anyone in Malta who wants to join the group, the next big walk is scheduled for the 30th of March at 9:15, and you can get in contact by joining the Malta March to Malawi Challenge Facebook Group.

With some final words from Francesca: “What inspires me is seeing all the fantastic work being done by Megan, Liz and Geoff and all the Ripple Africa team. I am so impressed with all the hard work and dedication and how they have managed to change so many people’s lives. How they manage to do so much, are all so creative and have so many projects happening in Malawi is just amazing, and it is so refreshing and uplifting to see so much good in human beings when we are always bombarded with terrible news items of wars and killing. Ripple Africa’s team and others like them never get the acknowledgment or coverage or awareness they deserve.”

On behalf of RIPPLE Africa, thank you so much to all the wonderful women in Malta who are working so hard on our behalf!

March to Malawi is a group fundraising event that wants to draw 40 people from around the world to participate, and collectively aim to walk the distance from RIPPLE Africa’s base in the UK to RIPPLE Africa’s base in Malawi. That’s 8,474 miles from the UK to Malawi – or a commitment of 210 miles per person – to be achieved over a period of 7 months from March to September 2012. Anyone in the world can participate! You simply need to make a commitment to walk 210 miles (just 1 mile a day, or 7 miles a week!) and set a personal fundraising target of just £500. Joining in will help people to keep fit, and participants will feel fantastic about raising money for RIPPLE Africa and helping the whole group to meet this important challenge. If we can find 40 dedicated people to help us meet our target that will add up to 8,474 collective miles walked around the world, and a collective £20,000 raised for RIPPLE Africa!

To get involved, visit our special webpage about the event, and send us an e-mail to register.

On the afternoon of Saturday 3 December 2011, 14 boys, Ali Gaskell (their physics teacher and previous RIPPLE Africa volunteer) and many parent helpers gathered at the Tonbridge School pool, hoping the swimmers would be able to achieve their target. In fact, there was no reason for any doubts as the boys swam tirelessly with impressive dedication and enthusiasm. Swimming together, they all cheered each other on and every swimmer swam an impressive number of lengths. Special mention has to go to Baz Shemirani who swam an astounding 102 lengths in 50 minutes. This collective effort meant that, within 50 minutes, the group had more than attained their target as they had swum a total of 831 lengths – or 20.8km! And they still had some time – and energy – to spare for a bit of water polo!

While the swimmers did a fantastic job, it was the whole class who made this event a real success. The aim of the swim was to raise money for RIPPLE Africa, and the class decided to fund some of the charity’s projects in the local pre-schools and the secondary school. The whole class raised a phenomenal total of £1,000 including Gift Aid, with one student (George Huxham) raising over £100 by himself. Ali Gaskell visited Mwaya over the Christmas break and was able to tell the boys of Year 8 what the money they had raised was being used for and who it was benefitting.

If your school would like to raise money for RIPPLE Africa, please go to our School Charity Fundraising page.

The evening was a great success with about 100 people attending the event, including 10 previous RIPPLE Africa volunteers who joined in the fun. The Chargé d’Affaires from the Malawian High Commission, Mr James Ali, and his wife also made the journey from London to attend, and he gave a very good speech during the course of the evening.

Vicki and Clements, the MAN representative, organised a variety of events during the evening, the most popular being the drumming session with drummer Jerry Elliott, who had brought along about 20 African drums so everyone could have a go.

We’d like to thank Vicki and Clements for all their hard work to make the evening such a success.

If you would like to hold a fundraising event for RIPPLE Africa, please go to our Start Fundraising! page to find out how.

To sponsor a deserving student like Emily, please get in touch with us.

If you’re not a friend of our Facebook page already, please consider adding us, and help us get to the next 1000!

Emily’s story is an inspiring example of how the hard work of a single individual can result in a huge difference to the lives of so many on the ground in Malawi. Unlike many of our community fundraisers whose link to RIPPLE Africa began through their volunteering experience in Malawi, Emily’s story is different. “I found RIPPLE Africa just by searching over the internet. I was looking for a charity doing astounding work either in Tanzania or in a country in that region of Africa. It was important to me that I chose a charity working in Africa rather than the UK as it was going to be the African people and their wonderful landscape that gave me the opportunity to go on this adventure. I searched for a relatively small charity that was somewhat unknown to the general public so I could raise awareness for the charity. I found a charity where I thought the money I raised could make a difference to a variety of projects; environmental to schooling to healthcare.”

Selecting RIPPLE Africa as her chosen charity was only half the challenge, as in addition to fundraising, Emily had to make sure she was fit for the climb, too. The trek itself was a difficult 6 day hike through snow and rain, with a 4.5 day climb to the summit, including a challenging final 6 hour climb through the night by torchlight to reach the summit at sunrise. Emily booked her journey through Action Challenge, a company which specialises in organised challenge events. She met other members of her group at the airport who had also signed up individually, but soon became a close-knit team, assisted by the help of professional guides. The fundraising however she had to organise on her own, doing everything she could think of to raise money: “I raised the money by standing in the tube stations with a bucket and a sign, explaining what I was doing. I work at a bar and luckily my boss is awesome and allowed me to put a collection pot on the bar. I was also able to do charity raffles on busy nights and even did cake sales and a sponsored silence- which when you work on a bar is not easy! All this on top of donations from family and friends meant I was able to raise a total of £3745.52.”

RIPPLE Africa is proud to have people like Emily working hard to support our charity, and we’re glad that the experience is equally fulfilling for her, too. “Overall the experience has been invaluable. It takes a lot of hard work to raise that amount of money and it was disheartening at times but always rewarding in the end. The trek itself was indescribably beautiful. It was worth the long days of hiking in the rain and snow, soaked through to my underwear to reach the magnificent views of the summit, meet so many wonderful people and make friends that I’ll share the unique experience with forever. I’d recommend anyone who has ever thought about taking on an adventure, such as my journey to Tanzania to climb Mt Kilimanjaro, to raise money for charity to just do it. You won’t regret it and RIPPLE Africa is a fab charity to raise for.”

“Well, it looks like Mwaya may have it’s first ever women’s football team. During my recent volunteer experience with Ripple Africa I witnessed Jenni’s passion for football and the enthusiasm she showed for teaching. So when she combined the two and created a girl’s football team at Kapanda Secondary School, a match was made.

In addition to the hours Jenni did in the classroom and the numerous tutoring sessions she gave, I am sure a highlight of her time in Malawi was the opportunity to not only play loads of football but also to coach. (Although, looking at the way Jenni was limping around by the end of her stay, I am not sure that her Achilles tendon appreciated how much football she was playing.) Anyway, after tryouts and so many training sessions that even a professional team would have trouble managing to keep up with, it was time for the girl’s first game. As it turned out, Chifira Secondary School already had two female football teams and brought both their A and B team with them for the big day.

It was wonderful to see how excited the girls from both teams were and you could virtually see their confidence and self-esteem grow before you. Jenni was mortified when she saw that the other team was wearing Man U shirts (one of her least favourite teams…she is an Arsenal supporter) and used it to fuel her pre-match pep talk to the girls.

The match was held on a very hot (even for Malawi) Saturday afternoon and when the girls had got over the novelty of wearing shorts, with many a nervous giggle, they were ready to hit the field. The girls played with great spirit and determination. Even though the game went for 2 hours and the Chifira girl’s had enough subs to put a whole new team on the field in the 2nd half, the girl’s kept fighting, despite defeat. After the game, the girl’s were already talking about when the next game would be.

Now it looks like the time is right for a Mwaya woman’s team as well and although Jenni wasn’t there to see it, on all accounts, there was a great turn out for their first training session, with the likes of Ester and Catherine bending it like Beckham. Hopefully it is a legacy that will continue in her absence.

Good stuff Jenni!”

(Nikki and Jenni volunteered during the same time period, from September to December 2011.)