Charities often look to stars from the worlds of sport and show business to help to raise funds.
Well, the Kupata Project has been lucky enough to win the support of an absolute superstar.
Ray
I guess before telling you about Ray, I need to tell you about the Kupata Project. We are a small Scottish charity and we raise money to provide Ugandan school girls with free sanitary wear. Why is this important? Easy. Access to sanitary wear means up to 25% more time in school.
Which is life changing.
Of course it is life changing in a country where the average wage is barely a dollar a day.
The Kupata Project has no offices, no paid staff, and no fat expense accounts.
What we do have is a magnificent team of committed young Ugandan volunteers whose dedication makes everything we manage to achieve possible.
Every penny we raise goes to buying 'SoSure' re-usable sanitary pads which are made by a non profit organisation with a factory in Uganda.
Each pack of two pads costs £1.50 and we give the girls two packs each – enough to meet their needs for a year.
£3
£3 per girl per year.
It is a life changer which is very affordable.
So
It's time to tell you about Ray.
Full name – Ray Tumuhimbise.
And of course you have never heard of him, even though he must be one of the world's greatest athletes for his age.
Which is 6.
Yes.
6
At six years old Ray is smashing records right, left and centre. At six years old, it is already clear Ray has already joined an African hall of athletic fame which is home to the likes of Kip Kano and Gabriel Haile Selassie.
Over the last year, Ray has become the young king of the Mountains of the Moon, a string of towering volcanic peaks which straddle the borders of Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. These are true life Hollywood mountains, wrapped in impenetrable rain forests and rising through the clouds to jagged peaks. They are home to gorillas and a myriad of wild life. They climb over 15,000 feet into the blue African skies. They offer movie backdrops billions of years in the making. Picture King Kong. Picture Jurassic Park. OK? You get the picture.
These are the mountains Ray has taken on.
And conquered.
Vanquished.
Earlier this month 2021 he took on Mount Muhabura. 4127 metres. That's 13540 feet in old money. A few hundred feet shy of the Matterhorn.
Ray went up and down Muhabura in under nine hours. Yes. You read it right.
Under nine hours.
At six years old.
Now you can see why Ray has to be one of planet earth's greatest athletes for his age.
He must have the legs of a mountain goat and a pair of lungs the size of the Congo rain forest.
He's a pocket size force of nature.
Maybe the next African athletic superstar.
But that is all in the future.
Right now Ray has offered to help his sisters by raising funds for the Kupata Project.
And his next quest is Mount Sabinyo.
Here it is.
3645 metres. 12,000 feet.
Sabinyo is a long extinct volcano which stares out over the land where we human beings took our first tentative steps on this earth.
The borders of Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic republic of the Congo meet on the summit.
Sabinyo's sheer slopes are jealously guarded by ancient forest. The route to the top means climbing hundreds and hundreds of precipitous feet of the kind of rickety ladder you only tend to find in the movies.
It is a ladder which requires both courage and raw strength, both of which Ray has in spades.
His goal is to ascend and descend Sabinyo in a handful of hours.
I know.
Crazy, right?
Six years old!
We will show you how he gets on in future blogs. Now we really hope lots of you might be willing to place a donation to offer the encouragement he deserves. For such a young boy to be willing to do this to raise money to help his sisters really is very special.
Ray really is very special.
If you are of a mind to support him, the link below takes to to the fundraising page we have set up for him. And please, please share this link. We hope as many people as possible can be inspired by Ray. We have all lived through many dark and depressing weeks and months. Here is something to inject some optimism and hope.
Something to be inspired by.
