Standing at 5,895 metres high – Kilimanjaro remains one of the world’s great challenges.On April 5th, Brian Stokes, founder and Managing Director of tech support firm ITCS, took on the gruelling charity trek with fundraising in mind for a local charity.
He successfully completed the challenge – unfortunately, not everyone in the group was able to – and some had to be physically carried to the summit.
“It was a tough challenge, but a very memorable and rewarding one.”
Says Brian,
“Watching the sunrise over Africa from nearly 20,000ft, was like nothing else, but I believe setting challenges however big or small, is a good thing to do. Pushing boundaries, and striving towards our goals is important in life. Our work, personal and family life, can all be affected in a good way with a positive mind-set.”
Brian and the group were able to raise £1,655 for LATCH: Welsh Children’s Cancer Charity. Brian chose the charity as a cause due to their fantastic support of an amazingly brave little girl from Maesteg, Amira Barry. Amira was diagnosed with Leukaemia last year, and is currently receiving support from LATCH. The fantastic help and support provided by LATCH has driven Brian and ITCS to raise money to help the charity continue its excellent work.
“LATCH Welsh Children’s Cancer Charity needs to raise, on average, £800,000 a year to cover the costs of supporting families like Amira’s.”
Brian continues,
“So, we wanted to test ourselves to the limit, and see what we are capable of, whilst raising money for a really worthy cause.”
Brian has returned with lifelong memories and valuable lessons.
If we want to learn new things in life, we have to embrace challenges head-on and to treat any setbacks as a learning experience, never a failure. Climbing Kilimanjaro was similar in a lot of ways to running a business: it’s only possible by surrounding yourself with like-minded people and having a positive can do attitude, a growth mind-set and self-belief that you can make it work.
There is still time to donate to Brian’s JustGiving Page by visiting: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/brian-stokes-kilimanjaro
