Challenges, Inspiration

Leading the Sumatra Orangutan Jungle Challenge – Part 2 – At the Orangutan Feeding Platform:

May 11, 2012

The day begins with an early morning rise and a short walk, followed by a canoe crossing to the orangutan feeding platform at 8.30am. Everyone’s doing well to acclimatise to the heat and humidity today, rehydration sachets have quickly become everyone’s best friend!!

The Gunung Leuser National Park is one of the orangutan’s last remaining strongholds, with more than 5000 animals thought to be living in the wild, and our first encounter with the Pongo abelii, ‘the Sumatran Orangutan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumatran_orangutan) was certainly something to remember! The orangutan, the world’s largest arboreal mammal, means “people of the forest” (Orang – people, Hutan – forest) in Indonesian. We’re all tired from climbing the steep slope up to the orangutan feeding platform and paying too much attention to our feet, when suddenly the group comes to an abrupt halt. Being the last one in the group I later discovered  that our path was blocked by a female Orangutan  standing 3ft tall, fists clenched and refusing to move to let us through.

The Sumatran Orangutan Society have devised a set of regulations when visiting the Orangutans in the Gunung Leuser National Park and our first encounter showed us just how important these are. There are many guides who will try to entice the Orangutans with food so they come close to tourists. This actually teaches them to be aggressive if they don’t get what they want!

 It is important to follow the guidelines and listen to the licensed guides at all times. (for more info see our Sumatra Jungle Challenge Q&A’s). All of our guides follow a strict code of no contact with the Orangutans. Some of our guides are also involved with research and conservation projects based in the area and are fully aware of the importance of following conservation guidelines, both to protect the jungle and the indigenous wildlife, but also to set an example to other guides and visitors.

It’s really a memorable experience to watch the orangutans in the tropical rainforest of Gunung Leuser National Park, but these animals need to be protected with care. The Sumatran orangutans (Pongo abelii) are rarer and smaller than their Bornean relatives, who have lighter hair and a longer beard. Today there are approximately only around 6,600 left in the wild, most of them in the provinces of Aceh and North Sumatra. The expansion of oil palm plantations into fragile Eco-systems is the most acute threat to their survival. But also illegal logging and the pet trade add to their declining population.

The purpose of the centre we visited was to rehabilitate orangutans in captivity so they can be released in to the wild again. Rangers teach the orangutans all the necessary skills to survive in the wild. After an intense period of quarantine, readjustment to the natural habitat and reintegration into the (semi-wild) population, the orangutan is released back into the jungle. All orangutans released are still monitored by the rangers and they still provide them with supplementary food at the feeding platform until they become fully self reliant. The Gunung Leuser national Park is also a life support for the people of Bukit Lawang. All Charity Challenge guides are employed by Expedition Jungle who is fully inclusive of the local population. Their viability depends on the knowledge of the people of Bukit Lawang as well as the natural and cultural environment. They also hope that by exposing tourists to the beauty of the rain forest and the current issues they can generate outside support and contribute towards highlighting the plight of Sumatra ‘s rainforests before it is too late!

Part 3 coming soon!

If Jo’s experience in Sumatra has inspired you, check out our Sumatran Jungle Trek here, and subscribe to this blog to hear about what happened next. To keep up to date on all our challenge news, both jungle and not, please enter your email address into the adjacent box to subscribe to our mailing list.

Challenges

Back to Brazil

May 9, 2012

Our veteran Team Leader (and blogger!) Trevor Gibbs is going to Brazil this October to lead our Brazil Community challenge, and is thinking back to what he experienced there 12 months ago…

“I am off back out to Brazil this coming October, to lead a team of volunteers into the slums of São Paulo. Now many might see that as a testament to a mind laid waste by Larium and swamp fever, but to me it sounds like the start of a whole new adventure.

I was last in Brazil 12 months ago, working in the north-east of the country for a company called Charity Challenge. The job back then was to look after a pair of teams working on the renovation of two crèches in the heart of the São Francisco Valley, near a town called Petrolina. I remember us arriving at work that first day, to be greeted with a series of concrete shells that were overgrown with weeds and littered with the broken reminders of years of neglect. The scale of the work was daunting to say the least. The playgrounds were a tangled mass of weeds, rusting metal and old car tyres, whilst the classrooms themselves were little more than a dingy collection of sombre rooms filled with cobwebs and mosquitoes.

Over the coming days though we cleared the jungle and removed the rubbish, built walls and sandpits and began to transform the walls of the crèches into canvases of colourful murals. We overcame heat and dust, giant toads and limping tarantulas. We cleaned floors and windows, tiled bathrooms and inflated enough balloons to launch a small car. We also had fun! Our mission had been to help create an inspiring and safe environment for the children and by the end of the project we were a mass of grinning smiles and grubby, tear-streaked faces.

There are few things in life more likely to raise the spirit than the sound of a child’s laughter, especially when that child has grown up in a community denied the basics that most of us have grown up taking for granted. I still recall my last day there, looking down at the grinning face of a small child covered in face paint and clutching a smiley balloon…

…Twelve months on and I have no idea what faces me in São Paulo, but if last year was anything to go by, it promises to be interesting…”

To find out more about Trevor and his adventures, please visit his website at www.agamaconsultants.co.uk. To learn more about our Brazil Community challenge, and all the treks that we offer, please visit our website at www.charitychallenge.com. To keep up to date on all our challenge news, subscribe to this blog by clicking on the orange RSS button, you can also enter your email address into the adjacent box to subscribe to our mailing list.

Challenges, Inspiration

Leading the Sumatra Orangutan Jungle Challenge – Part 1

May 1, 2012

My name is Jo and I am the Operations Manager at Charity Challenge for the Sumatra Orangutan Jungle Challenge. After 18 months of planning our newly launched Sumatran Challenge to everyone’s envy in the office I found myself sitting on the plane on the way to Medan, Sumatra. The three months I spent in the Borneon Jungle in 2007 seemed a distant memory but not so distant that I couldn’t remember what made me so excited about returning to this part of the world! I couldn’t wait to have the privilege of living and experiencing the prime rainforest in Sumatra if only for just 6 days. I also knew that the experience ahead of us would be one almost impossible to be put into words on our return. So I’ll try my best to convey the magical challenge of the ‘jungle’.

Six hours into my flight and I’m trying to get my head back into jungle life by reading the Guidebook to the Gunung Leuser National Park so kindly written and downloadable on the Sumatra Orangutan Society’s website (www.orangutans-sos.org). Feeling a little nauseous from eating a big coconut and a chocolate cookie followed by a small toblerone bar given to me on the plane! I’m starting to leave the insanely busy mad rush of London behind me and starting to imagine the crazily loud call of cicadas, the sound of running water and the sensation of sleeping under the thick canopy of trees sheltered only by a single tarp with my group of Challengers (I hope no one snores!!!) I try to imagine the noise of the calls of the Orangutans and the rush of wings of the Hornbills as they soar overhead but all I can think of is Leeches, spiders, centipedes and snakes….In fact anything that moves that is not soft, fluffy and cuddly!

I soon find myself arriving in the small airport of Medan, and to my delight I am greeted with the numerous and never ending smiles which welcome you to Indonesia. Yes this is Sumatra and this is the start of the Challenge to come!

It’s soon time for the group to arrive, and Friday morning I’m at arrivals after a 4.30am start to transfer the 3 hours from Bukit Lawang to the airport to pick up the group. Romi and I play the game of ‘spot the group’, which really in Medan airport was never going to be that difficult as not many westerners came through security. One by one as they grab their day bags off the scanner I smile at the Boots and Charity Challenge t-shirts and suddenly get extremely excited for the upcoming week.

One of the most exciting moments of the challenge is meeting the group at the airport. Getting to know new people, building lifelong friendships and knowing that the next 10 days will be one of ups and downs, physically, mentally and emotionally. Full of raw emotions, exhaustion, happiness and maybe even terror, but knowing you have others to go through the experience with you, supporting you, offering a hand, a shoulder and a friend makes it an experience you will never forget!

As an Operations Manager at Charity Challenge, I am usually busy organising the challenges in the office and spend most my time in envy of our freelance leaders who get to meet inspirational Challengers and experience the treks first hand.

After everyone hopped on to the minibus we start our 3 hour drive out of Medan city, Sumatra’s major metropolis and Indonesia’s third largest city, population of 2million. We travel through  Palm Oil Plantations and go deep in the depths of the Sumatran Jungle until we reach Bukit Lawang! Bukit Lawang is home to the Sumatran Orangutan, and the entrance to the Gunung Leuser National Park, the surrounding jungle of which our challengers will take place, this is one of the most biodiverse regions in the world and is home to eight species of primate plus tigers, rhinos, elephant, leopards and cobras.

We are greeted by a smiling group of young boys who were eager and ready to carry our heavy bags across the rope bridge to the ecolodge (www.ecolodge.com) where by this point everyone was keen for food and rest. The Ecolodge is designed to serve as a model for sustainable livelihoods, as a non profit organisation, revenue is put back into community development, social programmes and nature conservation. Bukit Lawang (http://wikitravel.org/en/Bukit_Lawang) situated on the Bahorok River is famous for the rehabilitation centre for the Orangutans founded in 1973. Devastatingly a flash flood hit Bukit Lawang in 2003. The disaster destroyed the local tourist resorts and many friends and families of our guides. 239 people (5 of them were tourists) were killed and around 1,400 locals lost their homes. As you walk around Bukit Lawang you can witness the reconstruction and hear the stories of the local people, still all with that amazing Indonesian smile on their faces.

We hear a sudden sound of thunder as we sit down to Lunch of Nasi Gorang, Omelette and fresh watermelon, and realise it’s not thunder but the Macaques racing over the corrugated Iron roof, running and jump from tree to tree, branch to branch to finally nose dive into the river. The macaques are a funny looking primate with their whiskers and moustache and beards for the females. Macaques love the water and are great swimmers. So you are pretty much guaranteed to see them type roping along the telephone wires around the ecolodge and bathing by the river.

Part 2 coming soon!

If Jo’s experience in Sumarta has inspired you, check out our Sumatran Orangutan Trek here, and subscribe to this blog to hear about what happened on my next. To keep up to date on all our challenge news, both volcanic and not, please enter your email address into the adjacent box to subscribe to our mailing list.

Inspiration, Tips & Advice

Top Fundraising Tips – from Charity Challengers past, present and future!

April 30, 2012

For a surprisingly large number of our challengers, it is not the thought of cycling for days on end, or trekking for over 8 hours a day or even summiting a volcano that makes them quake in their boots. Instead, it’s the rather terrifying notion of fundraising enough money to meet their sponsorship target!

To provide a helping hand, we have a page on our website dedicated to fundraising, and also an ‘A-Z of Fundraising Ideas’ document. But we understand that the very best fundraising tips are ones that come first hand, and tried and tested by someone walking the same footsteps as you. So, with help from some of our Charity Challenger Facebook friends, we’ve put together a list of 10 top ways to fundraise big money for your charity.

1)      Get in touch with your Charity

It is as much in their interest as yours that you do well with your fundraising, so your charity will be more than happy to give you advice and ideas about how to go about your fundraising, and provide you with any necessary or official documentation you may need to get started.

2)      Set up a fundraising page online:

The first real step of your fundraising campaign is to set up a means whereby money can donated to your charity in reference to your cause. For many the simplest way to do this is to set up an online fundraising page at sites such as Justgiving,  Everyclick and Virgin Money Giving. Using this page, your friends, family and well wishers can donate to your cause with minimum hassle.

3)      Get the word out

Now that your fundraising page is set up, make sure people know about it. Email your page’s link around to everyone you know, put up a link as your Facebook status, tweet about, etc. Don’t be shy with this, taking on a challenge of a lifetime and raising money and awareness for a deserving charity is about the most interesting thing you could be doing and people will want to hear about it, and more than likely will want to donate as well! Don’t stop at friends and family, get in touch with your local paper and publications as well, your challenge will make an excellent story for them and get your cause some great publicity.

4)       Get Family and friends involved

According to our recent Dog Sledding challenger Siân Gillham the key is ‎”Delegate, delegate, delegate! Get your friends and family to help you, its hard work on your own.” And she’s quite right, raising sponsorship money can be a daunting prospect, so get your friends and family involved in braining storming fundraising ideas and helping you out with the groundwork. After all, charity and fundraising is all about putting time and money aside to help people out. Escambray Encounter Challenger Susan Carroll was even able to combine fundraising with socialising – “When I was fundraising for a challenge, I held a dinner party called wine, dine and donate, everybody who came brought a dish and donated a tenner”.

5)      Approach Local businesses

This is an aspect of fundraising that unnerves quite a lot of people, but it really is worth conquering those nerves and remembering that the worse they can do is say no! Charity challenger Kate Jones recommends visiting the all your local shops, “my sisters and I go around our local shops asking if they’d like to donate anything for our fundraising night for st davids hospice. We usually get quite bit!” As it will help give them a good reputation and a bit of publicity, businesses will likely be willing to do something to help you with your fundraising campaign, such as give you items to use to raffle prizes, or let you rent out a space for an event free of charge etc. Getting in touch with local organisation worked really well for upcoming Trek to The Home of the Dalai Lama Challenger Shauna Mullan – “I sent out letters requesting bag packs to all the usual stores & got a lot of support from smaller branches of M&S/tesco.”

6)      Sell stuff

Sometimes you don’t need to look further than your own attic to find a way to raise your minimum sponsorship. So why not do a bit of spring cleaning and put aside some items that you wouldn’t mind parting with. It’s surprising just how much money you can bring in by selling your stuff on ebay or by spending a couple of early mornings at your local Car boot sale.

7)      Organise an event

A great way to fundraise a substantial amount of money is to set up a special event, and the sky’s the limit with what you can do! Challenger Shauna Mullan arranged a Teddy Bears picnic and got her daughters school involved.  Veteran Charity Challenger Jo Buckett organised Race nights (an evening watching video of horse racing, plus betting), pub quizzes are a classic and ‘Zumbathons’ are apparently all the range right now, challenger Marion Baker Was Dance even had the creative idea of setting up and selling tickets for a paranormal ghost hunt! Organising events such as these can be hard work, but they are great fun and can help you raise lots of money and awareness for your charity!

8)      Every little helps

For those of you who just don’t have the time to arrange big events, there are lots of lower key everyday things you do. For challenge veteran Jo Berridge cake baking worked a treat; “I made cakes and took them to work and then conveniently left a sponsorship form next to them. I didn’t ask for donations/sponsorship in exchange for cake but everyone just assumed that was the deal and I raised almost £200! No effort involved other than baking the cakes”. You won’t always raise big money, but it all helps and takes you that one step closer to your fundraising target.

9)      Think big

Don’t be afraid to be think big with regards to your fundraising, Etna Volcanic Adventure  Challenger Rob Sharp wrote to big corporations and a couple of celebrities in his quest for sponsorship, which paid off with a very exciting and mysterious £500 anonymous donation. Don’t be shy of thinking outside the box either. Great Wall Discovery challenger Emma Stanford  had an inspired idea. “We put together a special Cook book! We collected recipes from family, friends,Gary Rhodes and phil vickery. Had our local craft centre for adults with disabilities do the art work. Found a local printer who printed 300 books for free. Sold them all for £3.95 each. Even got some signed by phil and Gary!”

10)  Embrace it

Fundraising as much as you can for your charity is as much part of the charity challenge experience as the challenge itself. So embrace and enjoy it! You may have to take yourself out of your comfort zone and do things you never thought you would or could do, but going above and beyond and achieving something that will not only change your life, but also the doubtless hundreds of lives that your charity effects, is what charity challenge is all about! So work hard for your fundraising and be proud of what you raise.

We hope you found this article useful! To learn more about all our charity challenges,  Please visit our website at www.charitychallenge.com  and to keep up to date on all our challenge news, subscribe to this blog by clicking on the orange RSS button, you can also enter your email address into the adjacent box to subscribe to our mailing list.

Inspiration, Responsible Tourism

Earth Day – Why not make it every day?

April 23, 2012

I saw a funny picture on the Internet yesterday. It was an immense tornado circling over Kansas just last week. The caption read ‘A new poll suggests the public feels Global Warming is real’.

Considering that fears about drastic climate change due to the overheating of the planet were first expounded by scientists over 100 years ago, how is it possible that ‘The Public’ have only just realised that this theory is very much a reality? Sunday the 22nd of April 2012 (yesterday)  marked the 42nd anniversary of Earth Day, a celebration designed to educate the world’s population (using the catchy slogan ‘Mobilise the Earth) on the catastrophic effects of climate change and global warming. It is now the biggest civic observance in the world, working hard to convince ‘The Public’ to take their heads out of the sand.

The crew at Earth Day are mobilising billions of people across the world to participate in activities and contribute to their ‘Billion Acts of Green’, which is an amazing way for a regular Joe Bloggs to do anything, something, to make a change. But how far does this go? Are people using Earth Day to make themselves feel better about the rest of the year when they don’t cycle to work, don’t eat locally sourced produce and leave the tap running while washing up?

Perhaps instead of assuaging our guilty consciences by recycling for one day, we should take the time to think about the civic attitudes and environmental concerns that sparked off this global movement in the first place. It isn’t enough simply to say that we will ‘take shorter showers’, or, as I saw in one of the Acts of Green, ‘I will not flush the toilet for a day’. Fair enough, the water saved by doing this is pretty good, particularly if you live in a family of 3 or 4 people. But how sustainable is it? Wouldn’t it be better to, say, install a water-efficient showerhead as a more permanent measure, or instead of shortening your shower by 10 minutes for one day, make the conscious effort to shorten it for a minute or two permanently, saving you up to 150 gallons per month. Good for the water bill as well as the earth!

It’s just too easy to see Earth Day as a day where we can say that we are ‘environmentally conscious’. If you can walk to the shops instead of driving for one day, then why not do it every Sunday? Or every day? We can’t get complacent about this. This is especially true within the travel sector, where long-haul flights are massively detrimental to the environment. These flights are, unfortunately, an unavoidable part of running a tour operating business – this is why at Charity Challenge we have linked up with Climate Care to offset the emissions of the international flights of all our participants. By investing in development projects in areas like energy efficiency, renewable energy sources and forest restoration, we at least know that we are contributing something to the damaging effects that flying has on the environment. For more information on Climate Care and carbon offsetting, please click here.

To help foster understanding on the connection between Earth Day and the Charity Challenge mentality, we need to make all of our clients, charity partners and participants see that responsible tourism is not just a marketing fad for us. A good sustainability program can make a real difference to the planet, and most importantly, it really isn’t difficult to do. We source local guides and use locally produced food, which brings jobs and money into the economy in more than just a fleeting way. We strive to ensure that all the local accommodation used is ‘green’ and not wasteful of water, gas or electricity, and for each and every participant travelling with us, we make a donation to a local project or charity in the country they are visiting. These are just some of the things that we do – to read more on how Charity Challenge support Earth Day every day, and what you can do on your travels to contribute, please read the Responsible Tourism section of our website.

So to summarise, the crux of the matter is this – remember those cute but deadly Polar Bear babies in Frozen Planet? Imagine that the Polar ice melts and takes out Greenland in a deluge of water. No more fluffy bears, or Santa Claus for that matter. The weather in the UK turns weird… no wait, that’s happening already… and the price of fuel goes up. Oh, that one did too. All of these things realistically could and in some cases are happening! It may be too late to prevent it, but we need to try.

Join the global movement by visiting www.earthday.org/2012. And don’t stop there. Try to make Earth Day last EVERY day.

Inspiration, Tips & Advice

“Enjoy or Endure” – Convenient Kit lists from our friends at Outdoor Hire!

April 18, 2012

Warm, dry and comfortable will get you a long way on any trip. Avoid the misery of the wet, the cold and the downright uncomfortable by hiring kit fit for the job in hand. Get this right and enjoyment will surely follow.

We find that a lot of our challengers don’t want to spend a ton of money on kit which they may hardly ever use again. So we teamed up with our friends at Outdoor Hire to solve the conundrum by providing top notch kit for hire.

Layer, layer, layer, topped with a well fitted backpack, sleeping bag and mat – no skimping on quality when you hire at a fraction of the cost of buying.

When embarking on an adventurous challenge having the right kit makes a world of difference.

A Fantastic and efficient service, supplies top quality equipment /clothing , and makes once in a life time challenges affordable. I Will be using outdoor hire again!! Jambo Jambo

Dave Fowler, Kilimanjaro Challenger 

Outdoor Hire have also made the whole process easier still by providing up-to-date and challenge specific Kit Lists for every one of our challenges. So whether you’re climbing Kilimanjaro or cycling across Cuba, these Kit lists show you want you need and how much it costs.

http://www.outdoorhire.co.uk/charity-challenge/index.html – check out your Unique Challenge kit list here!!!