Inspiration

Following the London to Paris cycle ride which I did in May with around 25 other "like minded" individuals the charity representative who did the ride with us sent the following email:

Having just returned from Zambia I thought it would be nice to give you a quick update on my visit to Macha and give you a first hand account of where the equipment you have funded will be going.

Macha is simply a remarkable place. It is a Chiefdom is a rural area of Zambia with a total population catchment in excess of 100,000 people. Outside the boundaries of Macha people are still living in mud huts with thatched roofs but once you get to Macha the transformation is quite remarkable.

In Macha you have Schools, a Hospital, a Nurse Training School, a Maleria Lab, IT Training Centres, remote Medical Centres and even the beginnings of a Radio Station. It has taken Macha about 8 years to make this much progress and Computer Aid has provided most of the IT hardware that underpins this growth. However Macha continues to grow and the demand for modern IT equipment remains high.

The most pleasing thing to see was that the operations management and planning is undertaken by local people who have been trained up to run things and shape their own futures and destiny. In terms of development Macha has the essential qualities of local ownership, sustainability and potential for replication. Economic and business activities are on the increase due to the knowledge, information and training people can access via their PCs and the internet.

Computer Aid has sent it's first solar powered (shipping) container to Macha which, under their 'Help My Neighbour' initiative, they have decided to locate in one of the remoter outlying areas of Macha. We will continue to send more PCs (via our local NGO partner Linknet) and associated equipment to ensure progress is sustained and continues in the areas of education, health and agriculture.

For me it was particularly pleasing to see how much pleasure the kids got from being able to use PCs and understanding what a difference they are making to the future prospect of all the people in Macha. Many school children in Zambia still complete thier education never having seen a PC and this has devastating consequences on their future employment prospects.

So once again thanks to all of you who took part in London to Paris, it was worth cycling up those hills!

This really resonated with me in that the effort that I had put into training and fundraising was making an almost immediate and real difference to people's lives.

So, when the opportunity arose to make a further contribution via the Nepal event, I was pretty keen to sign up.

The hard bits now are the fundraising (I'm really conscious of lots of competing worthy causes out there plus my friends' and colleagues' incredible generosity very recently when I did London to Paris) plus the training, of course!