news: ITP travel to Rwanda!
Tuesday 17th April 2018
To celebrate ITP’s milestone 20th year, we are getting the whole company involved in our fundraising challenge by going the ‘extra mile’ to walk, run, cycle, swim, hop, skip, ski, skate and dance to Rwanda during the Summer of 2018!
As a company that works on international projects we regularly get to travel around the world. This has helped us to see how, in some places, our lives are miles apart from the people living there. We saw an opportunity to help in a way that can really make a difference to communities in rural Rwanda.
We’ve blogged before about our plans to buy a motorcycle ambulance for a health centre in Rwanda. To do this we will be working in partnership with the ‘Make a Difference for Africa’ charity, who help with the organisation and administration at the centre. The two centres, a physio centre and a more general medical centre, provide care for more than 1,000 people in this remote and mountainous area. Unsurprisingly, transport is a key barrier to accessing health care - particularly for the physio centre. Many patients are immobile, and even adults will often be physically carried several kilometres by other family members so they can access treatment.
A 4x4 vehicle would be expensive to run, and actually too wide for many of the access tracks to homes in the area. That’s why the e-Ranger motorcycle ambulance is the ideal vehicle for transporting people and equipment around the mountainous region, and provides a better option for some patients’ mobility challenges.
So to help make a difference, this summer ITP's team will be travelling 6,751 kilometres - the distance from Birmingham in the UK to Kigali, Rwanda - by any sustainable means possible. We've set ourselves a deadline of 3 months to complete the challenge, starting from 1st June 2018.
There will be rules in place - so our regular, everyday travel and commuting won’t count toward the total - and all activities and miles must be fully evidenced!
We are keen to dedicate our free time and test our fitness levels to raise money that will make a difference to the lives of people in need in rural Rwanda. Keep an eye on our social media channels to follow our progress over summer.
Please use this link to donate and help us make all the blood, sweat and tears that are shed over the challenge period worthwhile. Please don’t forget to add gift aid your donation to maximise the amount of money we raise!