Welcome to my JustGiving page for WWF!

I'm 42, I enjoy a casual run through the park, and I really have nothing to prove. And my knees aren't as fabulous as they used to be. So why the half marathon all of a sudden?

Well, at the risk of stating the obvious, our planet has got an uphill struggle on its hands right now. And we still only have the one planet, despite the best efforts of the Kepler Project (http://kepler.nasa.gov/).

We are all caught up in the voracious "machine" of the 21st century, but this is a chance for me to try and do a tiny something positive for Mother Nature. And WWF is an organisation that I have admired for a very long time. So when they offered me a place in the team for the Reading Half Marathon, I was in no position to say anything other than "yes."

WWF is the world’s leading independent conservation organisation. They're tackling the most serious conservation challenges facing the planet, and trying to build a future where people and nature can thrive together. WWF is passionate about sharing the planet’s finite resources in a more sustainable way, about taking action on climate change and protecting endangered wildlife.

Here are some examples of how your donation could help:

·         £10 could buy 10 seedlings to help replant the forests of Tanzania

·         £25 could pay for five fuel-efficient stoves for five families in China’s Minshan Mountains – home to the giant panda. The more efficient stoves reduce the amount of wood that the family needs to collect from the panda’s habitat

·         £50 could provide the weekly salary for two field assistants studying humpback whales at Bahia Malaga off the Pacific coast of Colombia

·         £100 could pay for a week's training for a Wildlife Warden

·         £360 could fund two Global Positioning Systems for the orang-utan project in Borneo, so the exact location of their nest sites can be recorded 

·         £1,000 could pay for the rehabilitation of two hectares of tropical forest (the equivalent of about 5 football pitches) in the Heart of Borneo, including evaluation surveys and planting of tree seedlings

So please, do what you can and donate something now. I hope it will hurt your wallet less than the run is likely to hurt my knees.

There's also something else you can do that won't cost a penny - take part in Earth Hour (8.30pm on Saturday 26th March - see the video on the left), and tell all your friends. If hundreds of millions of people around the world can take action together in just one hour, how much more can we do every day over the rest of the year?

Thank you!