You may have seen us in the news recently. We're famous!

Last weekend a team of AbleChildAfrica staff and friends of the charity headed down to Wales to line up on the start line of "probably the toughest event on the planet", Tough Mudder. It's a 12 mile obstacle course that takes you through mud, ice and rivers, over 12ft walls and under barbed wire. It's designed by the special forces and is as much about mental toughness as it is physical strength. 1 in 4 people who start Tough Mudder don't finish - all 12 of our team made it to the end. That's all 12 of our team, including Team GB Paralympian and AbleChildAfrica Patron, Anne Wafula Strike. Anne uses a wheelchair because, growing up in Kenya, she contracted polio as a child leaving her paralysed from the waist down.

As we lined up on the start line, with Anne and our special guest (Olympic Swimmer and TV personality) Mark Foster - we had no idea that we would have such a profound and inspiring impact on our fellow "Mudders" with our teamwork and unrelenting camaraderie as we worked as a team to get round the course. It took us 7 hours in total and, throughout, Anne showed the fighting and determined spirit that made her a successful athlete in the first place. This rubbed off on the team and all the participants who saw us in action finding innovative ways to show that using a wheelchair needn't be a barrier to reaching your goal.

You can see pictures from the event on our Facebook page here:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151713633366909.1073741828.245395156908&type=1

Our fighting spirit, togetherness and endurance earned us a spot on the ITV London news where Anne talked eloquently about the event, but importantly about why it's important to use these events to raise awareness about disabled children in Africa and the barriers to inclusion that they face on a daily basis. You can see the clip here:

http://www.itv.com/news/london/topic/tough-mudder/

As Anne says, the reason we took part at the weekend was to raise funds to help AbleChildAfrica continue supporting disabled children in Africa to access their rights and have the best possible chance of fulfilling their full potential. This means we are working with local African-led organisations to help them be models of best practice for supporting disabled children. For example we work with Inclusive Early Childhood Education Centres to ensure that the local disabled children in the community aren't one of the 98% of disabled children in developing countries out of school. You can help us to do that by contributing to our fundraising effort to raise £10,000 on the back of our Tough Mudder exploits.

You can donate online here:

http://mydonate.bt.com/events/acatoughmudder

Or via your mobile phone by texting "MUDD13 £5" to 70070.

We don't normally make one off pleas for funds, but this was such an incredible and unique achievement we hope that it may inspire you to give. Thank you as ever for supporting the leading UK charity working solely for disabled children in Africa.

With best wishes,

Chris

Programme Officer