My "Noble Cause"

(Thanks to Steve Runner for the phrase : noble cause.)

I've run one marathon for charity. In 1998, frustrated at my inability to get into the London Marathon on the ballot for three consecutive years, I decided to take up a "Golden Bond" place and was able to raise over £3000 for the PHAB charity, supporting activity centres for disabled children.

Since Hill & Valley Coffee opened in 1999, we have fund-raised for various offbeat charitable causes in coffee producing countries. In early 2006 we finally found the cause that we want to work with on a long-term basis.

I have a particular emotional attraction to Uganda - it was where I "cut my teeth" as a coffee buyer in the 1980's and I got to know Ugandans who had lived through the turmoil of the Obote and Amin regimes in the decade before. These inherently dignified and always cheerful people seem capable of retaining their optimistic view of their future through whatever turmoil is thrown at them. It is my belief that eventually Ugandans will be able to control their own destiny and "develop" if we just give them a helping hand - not necessarily a hand out. For many reasons the country is capable of transcending the "undeveloped / poor / failed state" paradigm of much of sub-saharan Africa.

Lisa, my daughter, went to the south eastern area of Iganga to teach in a primary school for 4 months in 2002, and this brought home to me how desperate most young Ugandans were to seek education as a way out of poverty and underdevelopment. Under Yoweri Museveni as president in a form of quasi democratic beneficial parliamentary dictatorship, Uganda is less and likely to be a failed state, despite problems brewing to the north, west and even in Kenya to the east.

Equipped with some first hand knowledge of the country and its educational system, we decided, as a family, to seek a way of funding education in Uganda for specific individuals who needed help. As in many areas these days, we commenced our search by "googling" secondary school scholarship uganda and that's how we came across the wonderful young people running the Uganda Villages Project.

Five months later and with dozens of information hungry e-mails behind us, we are now actively supporting a group of orphans to get secondary schooling in Iganga district. Yes, the same region as Lisa travelled to and taught in. An auspicious coincidence.

What has all this to do with "Coffeeman Running" though?

Well we now have 26 children whose educational needs we want to cover for 2007. One child for each mile of the marathon I intend to run in Lausanne on October 22. All the children are in the same secondary school, Busalamu SS, in rural Iganga district. We have calculated £50 per child as sufficient to pay the school fees, leaving enough for a contribution to materials and exam fees as well as the all important clean white school uniforms which distinguish the children in term time.

So as my marathon training enters its last 9 weeks I am trying to raise sponsorship for these 26 young people, one by one, mile by mile. Individual sponsors are being sent a jpeg photo of the child and in most cases a pdf of a letter they have personally penned to their sponsor.

They say that running a marathon is always something of a "life enhancing" experience. On October 22nd I intend to enhance the lives of these 26 young people as the mile markers pass, hopefully with the inspiring view of the Alps on my side as I glance across the still waters of Lac Leman between Lausanne and Vevey.

There are as many reasons for running as there are days in the year, years in my life. But mostly I run because I am an animal and a child, an artist and a saint. So, too, are you. Find your own play, your own self-renewing compulsion, and you will become the person you are meant to be. ~George Sheehan

Oh and that picture at the top is of Charles Tezikoma. He is 17 years old and currently in year S2 at Busalamu. He doesn't know it yet, but a very nice lady who spends weekends working hard at British Eventing Horse Trials has just paid for his education next year. Charles wishes to be a policeman and is currently top of his class. I'll be thinking of him as I run the first downhill mile down to the Parc de Denantou.

Only 25 more to go!