UPDATE (16 February 2025)

With the flights to Tanzania completed and a leg stretch walk yesterday to help to acclimatise, this morning we set off to take on our challenge. The 3 of us stand here looking up at Mount Kilimanjaro and, over the next 8 days we will make it to the summit and return to where we stand now. Thank you all for your donations. Please share my page far and wide. I have a good feeling about the momentum of support so I have raised the target amount bar to £5,000!!!!! I will get to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, please help me get to the summit of my fundraising target

UPDATE (9 January 2025)

I've had a lot of good feedback and, in anticipation of incoming donations and wanting to complete the update before I run out of spare time between work and increased training, I have bitten the bullet and increased my target to £3500

UPDATE (29 October 2024)

Thanks to some fantastically generous people I have managed to reach my upgraded fundraising target. As a result of this great news I am to raise the bar again, this time to £2500. To all who have made a donation, thank you from the bottom of my heart. For those who want to donate but feel that there's would only be a small donation, I don't care. If you give £1 it is £1 more than I had before. Another way you can help is to share my page with your own social circles so I reach a bigger audience.

UPDATE (15 October 2024)

As a result of the overwhelming support that I have received since opening this page I have raised nearly double my original target so I have decided to increase my fundraising target to £1500 and, if the support and generosity continues and I find myself closing in on that target, I will raise the bar again.

This really has given me a boost and I would like to thank those who have been so generous for their support and encouragement 🙏

THE CHALLENGE

In February 2025, alongside 2 other veterans, I will be aiming to summit Mount Kilimanjaro (19,340B), which is situated in northeastern Tanzania, near to the border with Kenya for Tom Harrison House and in support of The Rawthey Project CIC (Rawthey).

Since 2014 the Rawthey has supported 658 of the most vulnerable veterans and their loved ones. Being Relatively small and agile allows Rawthey to react quickly to fill the gaps in care when the needs of the veteran are complex and don’t align with mainstream protocols.

The recurring co-morbidity of Addiction has evolved into deep Cooperation between Rawthey and Tom Harrison House, the only dedicated veteran Residential Addiction treatment centre in the UK, based in Liverpool, a Care Quality Commission regulated, registered charity.

By Donating anything you can you are literally saving lives and for that it means the world to me, and I cannot thank you enough.

Please remember to select Gift Aid if you are a UK Tax Payer as this will help us raise even more money, without it Costing you another penny

Allan

MY STORY

You might ask yourself what makes a person like myself push himself to tackle such a mammoth challenge, so let me tell you a bit about my own journey;…

I'm Allan, I turned 40 last month and I served just under 12 years in the Army Air Corps. After leaving the Army in 2012 I found it difficult to get settled back into civilian society and began a rather turbulent time in my life, bouncing around from job to job and struggling with my mental health, eventually turning to alcoholism and drug Addiction.

I hit rock bottom on 22nd Dec 2022, street homeless in Falkirk, suffering severe drug and alcohol illness. In desperation my family reached out to The Rawthey Project for help. On the 31st December 2022, I left Falkirk and began the inaugural ‘Tom Thacker Course’ in January 2023.

Fast forward 21 months and I am now thriving, having been clean and sober since the course. Last year I completed a full time college course in healthcare, whilst concurrently working as an agricultural fencing contractor and shop assistant in the SPAR, Sedbergh.

On Completion of my college course, I started a job as a children’s Residential support worker in a care home where I share my lived experience, on a daily basis with the children in my care.

If I am asked what my greatest achievement since recovery is, I would have to say is being present, fully engaged and a great role model for my children Dylan and Layla.