Maria Conceicao's willingness has helped her exceed limits and become an athlete. Running, cycling and swimming were not hobbies she partook when growing up in Portugal. Yet she holds 6 GWRs for running, has attempted to swim the Channel and is now endeavouring to complete 6 Ironmans in 6 continents. Why? To give 127 children living in the slums of Bangladesh something she never had – an education. 

If they drop out now they face a future, where only one thing is certain: poverty.  

With the education of these 127 children, a whole community will have the tools to make a difference in their lives. Maria’s charity has already educated over 600 people from this community. They have gone to university; high paid jobs in Bangladesh and abroad and moved out of the slum to become respectable members of the society.

The children in Bangladesh do not need sympathy. What they need is a chance, someone to take action and make a plan – like Maria has for the past 12 years. Getting married as young as 13 to men twice their age or laboring in gloomy garment factories are the primary options for girls without education. Boys will find work as day laborers, rickshaw drivers or return to run-down farms in the countryside.  What Maria is doing is well beyond her physical limits, but there is nothing she wouldn’t do for ‘her’ children. Like any Mother would, she is fighting for her children at the cost of her own life.  

It is a 42km run, 3.8km swim and 180km bike ride. A full Ironman is something that seasoned athletes train for a year. We do not have the luxury of time. Extreme levels of training are needed to go from a novice athlete to Ironman level. Maria is risking serious injuries to accomplish this.

Help Maria raise USD479,000 to pay for school fees up to 2026, to give a better life to those the whole world seems to have forgotten. It may seem like a large amount, but is a small price to pay for completely changing 127 lives.