What Challenge?

Nearly a year has passed since I wrote my first blog post. I am very lucky that my year has been filled with new adventures across the world, testing challenges to overcome, time spent with friends and family, achievements I am proud of and failures that I will endeavour to learn from. Most importantly, I have stayed healthy, well fed (all be it on a self-inflicted and nutritious student diet of pasta and porridge) and (mostly) warm.

Billions have not been so fortunate. Large proportions of the world population are living on less than $2 per day, nearly 800 million are considered to be undernourished and 1.4 billion have no access to a source of energy. For the past few months my stresses and preoccupations have primarily revolved around the number of words I am privileged enough to write for my university degree, whether the crew selection for various rowing regattas is fair and how I am going to fill months of summer holiday. Everything is relative but it's fair to say I have it pretty good.

So what's the challenge?

Life would be boring if they weren't in rich supply and so I’ve taken the plunge and registered to run my first ever marathon. I am going to be running the Budapest Marathon on 15 October 2017, a mere 150 days from now.

As my fellow aspiring historians will attest, the importance of scoping an essay is important for those precious marks. It is almost impossible to get through ten minutes of daily life in the UK without benefiting from water or some form of energy and so I have decided to channel my efforts to supporting the development and implementation of sustainable and renewable water and energy sources.

In an ideal world, everyone would have the same opportunities. It is however completely unrealistic to think that that day is not many decades, if not centuries away. We have to start somewhere and the United Nations (UN) Millennium Development Goals and the revised UN Sustainable Development Goals have got the ball rolling nicely. Undoubtedly we have some progress but it is hard to appreciate the scale of the task ahead. It is going to take an innovative and sustainable approach to address some of these problems at their core. Feasible, maintainable and preferably renewable, energy supplies are fundamental to future development and will revolutionise the implementation of the economic, health, education and of course environmental goals.

If I am going to run enthusiastically around a 42 km course, I am going to do it for a cause. I have set a target to raise £1000 for Renewable World, a British based charity that works in some of the most remote and impoverished locations in the world. They adopt an evidence based approach to tackle the challenges of energy poverty and water security that communities are facing today. Operating within the confines of the existing community structure, they aim to understand specific needs, implement a sustainable and manageable solution, educate members on effective maintenance and provide courses in enterprise development to enable the community to prosper from their natural resources. It one of hundreds of charities working in this area though their unique implementation model and focus on sustainability means that they already have had and will have a lasting impact on the communities that they have been involved in. They mobilise natural and renewable resources to revolutionise individual lives, local economies and general community welfare.

Over the next few months, I hope to blog about my training, more about the work of Renewable World and some thoughts on the wider issues of sustainable development. I am not quite sure what lies ahead, I have barely run more than 10k at once before but I really hope that you can join me in this challenge; share this page, donate a couple of pounds, or even join me on a training jog!