By Community Correspondent Elaine Miller, On May16th over thirty of us are embarking on a trip of a lifetime as we fly off to Zambia for a charity fund raising bike trek. Locally based charity African Revival has organised the Zambia Bike Challenge. In just five days we will be cycling more than 500 kilometres, from Lusaka to Livingstone, home of the Victoria Falls. The journey will take us through the undulating terrain of Southern Zambia with its stunning and spectacular scenery. I get goosebumps just thinking about it!

This will be a truly awesome challenge and definitely the biggest thing that I’ve ever done. It’s going to be a lot more gruelling than the daily school run and bedtime story reading! All a bit mad really as I’ve only really cycled for a couple of hours at a time round Bushy Park before so this is really going to push me. But when I had my two children I realised they had a privileged start in life but not everyone gets that. You get to a point when you want to give something back so that’s why I got involved with African Revival. I used to work in advertising for Capital Radio so I got pretty good at persuading people to hand over money! I wanted to use these skills to help raise funds for charity.

We are aiming to raise more than £75,000 in sponsorship and the money donated will help African Revival’s vital work for children and young people. One of the highlights of the challenge for all of us will be visiting the projects; African Revival has been based near Kalomo in the Southern Province since 2006, establishing schools, providing water and sanitation, supporting teachers, providing classroom resources and building sustainable livelihoods projects. They work to give communities the skills and resources to lift themselves out of poverty and just shows what can be achieved through partnership with the local people.

Among those joining me on this amazing and unforgettable trip are other local residents and business people from around Hampton Hill. Gráinne Ronaghan from Allen & Allen, Mark Chapman of Mark Chapman Consultancy, Steve O’Neill MD of Decorative Rooms in Hampton, Nick Hornsey of ‘The Beavers’ - Hampton & Richmond FC, Jeremy Gildersleve, and John McKeown, owner of Cartridge World in Hampton Hill. John said “People keep saying that it will be a nice break but it’s not going to be a holiday. We’ll be cycling for about seven hours a day, just being in the saddle for that long is going to be a real challenge! I’m doing all sorts of things to get sponsorship including running a raffle in my shop. The beauty of African Revival is that it isn’t a vast corporate entity where you don’t know where your money ends up. All donations go directly to their projects in Africa.”

Jane Cockerell, Executive Director of African Revival in Hampton Hill said “We are so grateful to the Zambia Bike Challenge team for giving up so much of their time for training and helping us raise much needed funds. African Revival aims to run appropriate, effective and sustainable educational and income generating projects as we believe that improved education and economic growth are the keys to a brighter future for Africa. We are always inspired by the determination, resilience and optimism of the communities that we work with and it’s these same qualities that our adventurous bike riders are also exhibiting over the next few days. Thank you so much to everybody who is sponsoring a friend or colleague. Your donation really will make a huge difference."

If you would like to sponsor the team, please visit our website - JustGivinglink:http://www.justgiving.com/africanrevivalzambiabikechallenge For further information please have a look at the website - http://www.africanrevival.org Elaine Miller Community Correspondent, Hampton Hill