Our two Big Give Earth Raise campaigns finally ended on Wednesday, securing a grand total of £124,912 plus a further £6,115 in Gift Aid (UK tax reclaim). A central element of the campaign was The 3 Peaks challenge organised by Matthew Greenslade and friends of Matthew’s late son, Joe. Matthew has sent us this report:
We did it! We managed to do the 3 Peaks 24 Hour Challenge – climbing the highest peaks in Scotland, England and Wales in a 24-hour period. Our time was 23 hours and 28 minutes! By ‘we’ I mean, apart from myself, our son Joseph’s friends: Ash, Ali, Archie, Dan, Harry, Luke (who encouraged us on when we needed it), and our driver Iniga, a paramedic who radiated wonderful calm-in-a-crisis vibes.
Being 35 years the senior of everyone else, I knew there was a chance I wouldn’t keep up, I am so glad to say I did. It was a pleasure and an honour to be with a such a warm, undramatic, uncomplaining and determined group of young people. All of us were – and are – grieving in our own different ways for our son Joseph/friend Joe, who, if you are not aware, very tragically took his own life in October last year. I was blown away by – and am very proud of – the individual and collective determination of the group, who I know were thinking of Joseph on the hardest bits.
We met our fundraising target of £10,000. I never expected to get anywhere near it: I thought we might raise £200 or £300 each at a maximum. What is more, with the doubling of donations through the Big Give, something Pipal Tree, the charity we raised money for, participates in, the grand total raised is £21,086.24.
The money will pay for the planting and maintenance of ‘Joe’s Forest’, more than 2,000 square metres of forest on the Bagmati riverbank in Kathmandu, Nepal, a country that has been so close to Joseph’s heart. The work specifically employs local and vulnerable young women. And the work has already started – one of the photos shows saplings recently planted as part of the forest.
The3 Peaks 24 Hour Challenge was hard in places – especially the snow at the top of Ben Nevis, the rain and dark on Scafell Pike (title picture) and the last steep bit on Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon).
What was I surprised by? How beautiful the scenery is around Ben Nevis and Yr Wyddfa; how both mountains have proper scary summits with plenty of steep drops; how eery it is to climb at night, as we did with Scafell Pike; and I was surprised by what you can do if you are determined enough (and do some training).
A huge thank you to all who sponsored us and supported us in other ways, and to Julia Krepska of Our Sansar who hosted the fundraising site – and to Philip Holmes, head of Pipal Tree, for inspiring us and giving us a cause that has given us a great sense of unity and collective purpose.
Our pleasure! Well done to everyone and thank you to the sponsors. But this is just the start of it. We can now watch the trees grow – and thanks to the Miyawaki Method it’s certainly not going to be like watching paint dry. The trees will grow ten times faster than those planted conventionally. And meantime, they will be looked after lovingly by the workforce at our Nepal partner, Lily’s Leaves, who planted out the saplings – and now they have to do some weeding!
