During the pandemic lockdown period, while the rest of the team were in furlough, School in a Bag’s Founder and CEO Luke Simon has been running a skeleton workload in between home-schooling and climbing staircases!
Luke read about the Three Peaks Staircase Challenge in a magazine and promoted it as a potential fundraising idea to the charity’s supporter network. To inspire others, he also set about completing the challenge himself, which involved climbing the equivalent combined elevations of Ben Nevis, Scafel Pike and Mount Snowdon on the stairs up to his office, back-to-back. He finished in a time of 6 hours and 25 minutes.
The purpose of the challenge was to raise money to help School in a Bag’s international partners who are trying to support the home-schooling of the children they look after and oversee. The challenge raised £2,000 and five contributions of £400 were sent to partners in India, Tanzania, Ghana and Nepal.
Luke said: “The donations were gratefully received along with pleas for more money so there was only one thing for it – to go higher and further on the staircase! So at 04.25 on Friday May 29, I set off to complete Mount Everest on the same staircase with an aim to climb 4,023 flights of stairs (the equivalent of 8,848m) and a target to complete it in 24 hours. I finished at 02.50 on the Saturday morning finishing in a time of 22 hours and 25 minutes. A further £1,100 was added to the total.”
Luke’s additional fundraising helped provide the following:
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