Climbing for Literacy

In June 2019 I decided to lead a trek to climb the unforgiving Sapitwa Peak in Mount Mulanje at just over 3000 metres in support of better education for underprivileged children in Africa. It was the third mountain I have ever climbed and definitely the hardest, with kilometres of scrambling on all fours (!) but every challenging step we took in aid of CharChar was worth it to help to improve literacy in schools and benefit thousands of underprivileged children in Africa. Visiting the schools and seeing the direct impact of the great work of the CharChar trust was one of the most rewarding moments of my life…

Dear friend, It was just as Sally said! We walked, climbed and scrabbled on all fours to get to the highest point in Central Africa with the team of fundraisers for the CharChar literacy intervention in Malawi.

We had plenty of time to talk about our individual motivation for this challenge. All of the team had seen first hand how illiteracy cripples people and disempowers and disadvantages them.  From material health to job prospects literacy is vital to any kind of development of people and their communities. We all agreed that increasing opportunities and access to quality education was as good an inspiration to climb the peaks of Mulanje as you could ask for!

Now that we have returned back to wifi, we can say a big thank you for your support! I can report that we’ve all returned safely minus the odd toenail! 

Before we set out for our hiking challenge we went to see the inspiring literacy teaching and learning in action in two of the ten schools and I have no doubt this is already making a big difference to the 3000+ children’s lives. We are all extremely grateful for your support and look forward to updating you on CharChar’s work in the future.

Inspired and  invigorated, 

Sally Nelson & Nicky Robertson