This month, our team at Kanga Health challenged ourselves to walk, bike, run or swim 555 miles to support refugees in troubled parts of the globe who must trek many miles in search of safety.
We chose 555 miles as this represents the same distance between Izmir, Turkey to Dubrovnik, Croatia, a journey that people have been forced to take to find safety. All in the aid of raising money for the British Red Cross and its Miles for Refugees campaign, to do our bit to support the many refugees that need help at this time.
The fundraising campaign gives participants the chance to set a distance challenge from a range of choices, which are all based on the number of miles that refugees in different situations around the world are having to travel to reach safety. One distance was 22 miles – the length of the English Channel – while another was 108 miles, which is what it takes to get from Lviv in Ukraine to Lublin in Poland. Or there were longer routes available for the more ambitious, like us!
Our Kangaroos donned their running shoes, swimming costumes, and padded cycling shorts during lunch breaks, weekends, and evenings, to rack their miles up before the challenge ended on 30th June 2022.
And the result!! We blitzed the combined team target of 555 miles, achieving a grand total of 770 miles. That’s an extra 215 miles and is equivalent to walking from Congleton to Zurich, Switzerland.
We have also hit our fundraising target and raised £1,060 in donations. This amount will be matched by Kanga, making our final donation to The British Red Cross £2,120. This is equivalent to 127 food parcels and each parcel will sustain a refugee for 1 week… that’s over 2,600 meals!
Rupert Watts, Senior Strategist, at Kanga Health completed 150 miles in June and achieved the highest mileage of the team! He said of his efforts: “At the beginning of the Miles for Refugees challenge, I set myself a personal target of 150 miles and I smashed it, I bagged 158 miles. Not only did I go beyond my miles target, but I also went past my fundraising target too and raised £449. I am stoked about this!
Keen to make the lifestyle change long-term, he added: “I have really enjoyed the challenge, it has got me up and exercising earlier and out on my bike a lot more (before my colleagues quip, no, not my electric bike!). I have also been biking whilst doing short errands that I used to take the car for. My challenge now is to make that behaviour change permanent.”
Kanga’s refugee challenge has an additional relevance for the company as their CEO, Kay Wesley, and their Client Services Director, Helen Harrison, have recently each opened their doors and rehomed a family of Ukrainian refugees seeking asylum in the UK. Both placements are going great and each Ukrainian family is adapting well to life in England.
There is still time to support Kanga Health’s Miles for Refugees campaign, please visit https://miles.redcross.org.uk/teams/kanga-health
