Hi All, Back in 2008 Amy and I founded Milele as a way to help children from difficult backgrounds in Kenya to access high quality education. We were young, naive and optimistic; with the help of our family and friends we managed to scrape together the money we needed to get Milele started and began sponsoring the first 4 boys.

Over time, Milele has grown from our original group of 4 boys to 19 children and whilst our family and friends are still being just as amazing as ever, we have added a wonderful group of new sponsors and supporters who help us to keep Milele going.

We have also been incredibly fortunate to be able to employ Rieder as a full time sponsorship coordinator to manage sponsorship on a day to day basis, provide support to more vulnerable families and make sure we are always doing the best for our sponsored children.

Milele will officially be 10 years old in September 2018 and we would love to get together will all of the people who have helped us over the years to celebrate our collective achievements and raise some money for the exciting years ahead.

Milele 10 year ball invitations

We have sent out invites to all of our sponsors and supporters (so if you haven't received one please get in touch and we'll arrange for a replacement to be sent) and we would now like to extend the invitation out to anyone who is interested in finding out a little more about Milele and helping us raise some money for future children.

The event is being held at Dixie Pavilion in Market Bosworth on the 7th of July 2018, tickets are £60 each and can be bought directly from Amy or myself. We would love to have a room full of people so please consider bringing friends and family with you so we can celebrate together.

Thanks for your support!

Richard

At the end of February one of our (extremely brave) sponsors and a good friend of mine, Fae Vincent, will be doing a shark dive to raise money for Milele!

She is braving cold water in Edinburgh sea life centre and jumping in with over 60 different species of shark, including one in particular which is pretty dangerous in the wild... you certainly wouldn't want to bump into one of those on a dark night!

Fae visited Mtwapa herself with me on my very first ever trip back in 2007, where she volunteered at Mtwapa Academy, worked to distribute lots of toys and to help lots of children. She has had a really close link with the children out there ever since and now also sponsors one of our own children, little Saidi. On top of all this Fae is keen to do more to help children in Kenya and is now doing a shark dive to raise some money.

Fae has a target to reach of £450... if we can reach this figure then Milele will receive an additional £155 donation! So we are really working hard to hit this target! If you are reading this and you would like to dig deep and support Fae in her plans then you can donate now!

TO DONATE TO FAE'S SHARK DIVE PLEASE VISIT:

http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-web/fundraiser/showFundraiserProfilePage.action?userUrl=milelesharkdive&isTeam=true

AND CLICK DONATE!

100% of everything you give goes to Milele. Anything at all you can spare will really help us to reach our target and bag that extra donation! Thank-you!

Amy

Hello All, So training is going well, this weekend I tackled 65.5 miles of Leicestershire’s finest country roads. Making a complete loop around the city, with just a small detour into the outskirts at times! Overall it went quite well and we managed to complete the loop in 5 hours 40 minutes. This challenge is starting to seem as if it may be possible but we have a little way to go yet!

Hopefully next weekend I will be able to hit 80 miles in a day, which will be the real test!

Anyway, just a short update for those who are interested.

Bye Rich

Hello All, I thought now may be a good point to put a little update on the blog about our plans for the Blackpool to Brighton cycle.

So it goes without saying that I have been training with some vague hope of increasing my level of fitness and stamina. Over the past few weeks I have covered about 200 miles on the road and 60 miles on a exercise bike. By far the hardest route I have covered so far was 47.6 miles and took in the local 'beauty spot' of Ditchling Beacon which is known to cyclists in the Brighton area to be a rather tough hill which climbs 176m over 1.8km with the steepest point being a 16.4% climb. I'm hoping in the next couple of weeks to push my one day mileage to 80 miles which is what we will be aiming for on our final trip!

We are looking for people or businesses to help with our fundraising effort, we really need to find some accommodation in both Blackpool on the 27th of July and Stoke on Trent on the 28th of July. If you have any connections in either of these places who may be able to help us please email us and let us know.

Remember that you can find us on Facebook (Search 'Milele') and Twitter (@MileleCharity) where we will be posting all the information about our fundraising trip. Finally you can now donate to Milele and sponsor our cycle via our text donation system; text 'FUND22' followed by £1, £2, £3, £4, £5 or £10 to 70070.

Thanks for Reading Richard