Eleven lower sixth students climbed Snowdon this weekend to raise money for Amantani, a charity which helps children in Peru by providing them with boarding houses near to their schools. Before these boarding houses were set up, many of the children had to walk up to 8 hours every day just to get to and from school. Our walk up Snowdon was a representation of this walk undertaken by the children before Amantani began work in the area.
After 6 long hours of Ispy, sporadic outbursts of anything from Busted to The Proclaimers, and some snoozing in various unflattering positions; we arrived at Llandudno in North Wales. We went out for a carb-loading dinner at a very nice local fish and chip restaurant to prepare ourselves for the challenge of the following day. We had an early start on Saturday morning, we oo-ed and ah-ed at the beautiful landscapes and were amazed at the size of the hills (as anyone from Cambridge would be!). Snowdon’s peak was lost in the clouds when we began our ascent which made the beginning stages of the walk fairly daunting. The walk was challenging at times, but we all pulled through together as a group. The last 200m was a terrifying scramble up to the summit, we crawled up at times, and tried not to look down, but eventually we made it to the top.
We had lunch at the summit and after a quick photo, we headed back down. The clouds cleared and we were treated to some incredible views. As the tiredness kicked in, we were reminded of the reality of the struggle that these children face every day just to get to school. Our walk was nowhere near as hard as theirs; some of the children are as young as seven, they have no equipment, and have to do a walk further than ours day after day.
Our fundraising efforts will go to Amantani so that they can continue to help look after children in their boarding houses. Along with taking care of the children during the week, they help them with school work, run extra-curricular activities, personal development workshops and community outreach projects. Their work is carried out with the ultimate aim of keeping these disadvantaged groups of children in education, promoting social inclusion and encouraging indigenous autonomy and cultural pride. If you would like to sponsor our efforts and donate to this fantastic charity, please see our Just Giving page:
https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/stephenpersesnowdon2016