Ain’t No Mountain High Enough? How about Kilimanjaro?

Posted by Patrick

November 21, 2008

Yes you have read correctly; my colleague Neil Stoker and I will be climbing the highest free standing mountain in the world to raise money for Shared Interest Foundation Swaziland Project.

Over seven gruelling days we will be walking 20,000 feet to reach the summit, which is the highest point on the African continent!

This is all to raise money for something I feel very passionately about. As many of you are aware I have visited Swaziland many times over the last two years and was struck firstly by the kindness of Swazis, secondly by the beauty of this small landlocked kingdom but mostly by the gross inequality throughout the country.

Swaziland has the highest rate of HIV/AIDS in the world with almost every other person being inflicted with the disease. This – as you can imagine – is having devastating effects on an already struggling population.

The life expectancy currently stands at little over 30 and is set to drop to 27 (the same age as I am now) in the only two years.

There are 60,000 AIDS orphans, which is set to double in the next two years to 120,000.
Whilst Swaziland is classified as a middle income country there is an appalling skew in the income spread, with unemployment at approximately 40%, and 70% of the population living on less than one US dollar a day.

Working with fair trade producers, we will be giving business skills training to help them build sustainable organisations that will benefit the workers and therefore the immediate families and local communities.

Businesses are hugely impacted by the woefully low life expectancy and as such HIV awareness is an inherent part of the training that we will be conducting.

We are looking to raise £10k to fund this project and are more than happy to discuss corporate sponsorship opportunities as well as individual donations.