UPDATE; The coronavirus has had a huge impact on iAfrika and most of the children have had to be send home where that's possible. What they need right now is funding to buy food to make up food parcels to take to these children to ensure they don't starve.  With your permission we would like to give the funding raised to date to iAfrika to allow them to make these food purchases.  Please let us know if you don't agree with this approach.  We hope to restart our fund raising later in the year/next year, when things settle down and we'll find a new race to compete in.

On April 19th 2020, Ellie will be running the Vienna marathon and James and Clare will be running the Vienna half marathon to raise money for iAfrika.

iAfrika is located just outside of Nairobi, Kenya and operates as a rehabilitation centre and a school (Aubrey Newman's Academy) for children rescued from the streets of Nairobi. Since its inception a decade ago, more than 5,000 children have passed through their care. At the moment, they are a full-time home to 37 boys and 8 girls; however, they also support many more children through education or feeding programmes. They care for more than 700 children on the streets, providing hot meals twice a week, emergency medical care and legal counsel.

James spent three weeks last summer volunteering and Ellie is currently volunteering for two months.

iAfrika relies solely on donations and so needs your help in order to continue changing the lives of these children. James and Ellie have seen first hand the amazing work iAfrika does and have been privileged to work with them. Whether it’s playing sport, teaching maths and English, doing arts and crafts, helping in the office, joining the outreach programmes, home visits or just spending time with the children, it has opened their eyes to a very different life.  So now it’s time to challenge themselves and raise some financial support for this amazing organisation, and somehow they’ve persuaded their mum to join them.  

The money raised from your donations will go towards replacing all of the beds in the children’s dormitories. iAfrika still have the original wooden bunk beds from when they were first established which are well past their sell by date, with worn out and disintegrating bed frames. These old wooden frames are a breeding ground for bed bugs, and so iAfrika would like to replace them with metal-framed bunk beds to prevent these issues occurring again. The cost of replacing all of the beds would be around £6,000, and so we would like to do our best to raise as much as we can to replace as many beds as possible. And if we exceed our fundraising target, then hopefully we’ll have funds for new mattresses and mosquito nets.

So in April, Ellie will run the Vienna marathon and James and Clare will run the half marathon and we would really appreciate your financial support. A few pounds can make a huge difference and when lots of people do the same thing and it can transform these children's lives beyond belief. No matter how big or small your donation, every little bit makes a difference  

For those interested, please visit this link (https://www.immanuelafrika.org/our-stories) to hear the stories of some of the children at iAfrika, to help you to understand their work better. 

All donations to iAfrika are sent through the African Child Trust, a UK registered charity that passes 100% of the funds to iAfrika, allowing you to add gift aid on top of your generous donations.

Many thanks in advance,

The Calderwoods xx

P.S. Please see below some pictures of the school, iAfrika site, and the amazing children!