Part of my trip to play rugby on Everest is a commitment to raising £10,000 for the charity Wooden Spoon. Wooden Spoon, the children’s charity of rugby, specifically work with disabled and disadvantaged children in the UK giving them opportunities they otherwise wouldn’t get in life, opportunities that most of us take for granted every day.
For the cynics amongst you the £10,000 all goes to the charity, with the cost of the trip coming entirely from each of the challengers themselves. That is a large amount of money to raise by anyone’s standards and I suspect that a lot of potential challengers shied away from coming because they felt that sort of target was unattainable. Certainly I was conscious that I would need to pull in a few favours to hit the target so I decided to start somewhere familiar.
I have had my birthday celebrations at The Gurkha Kitchen in Oxted for almost twenty years and over that time have become good friends with the founder, owner and restaurateur extraordinaire, Purna Gurung. Purna very kindly agreed to let me use his restaurant for free and provide a meal for my guests at as close to cost as he could. The result was that I could run an event in my home town, similar to what I ran for Samurai RFC in London, and hopefully raise a decent chunk of money towards my target.
I had help of course. Ollie Philips hosted the evening superbly and via the help of Chris Robshaw and Joe Marler the main guest, Adam Jones, was a barn storming success. His handling of questions regarding pressing political issues of the day, the non-selection of Danny Cipriani and the merits of different hairdressers will live long in the memory.
The kindness of strangers never ceases to amaze when one of the guests at the dinner, who I didn’t know, bid £300 for £150 worth of restaurant vouchers.
“You’re mad” I told him after his winning bid.
“It’s for a great cause” he replied and who am I to argue.
I hope everyone had a good time and I certainly enjoyed hosting an event, which is a significant part of #MyEverest journey, in somewhere akin to a second home. We raised circa £2000 towards my total but as a side benefit we raised awareness in my home town of what Wooden Spoon is all about. As I said, rather clumsily, on the night:
“The truth about the Everest Challenge is that it isn’t about me, it isn’t about Ollie and the other captains, it’s certainly not about setting Guinness World Records and it isn’t even about the trip itself. We certainly won’t be changing the World on the World’s tallest mountain but the money we each raise on the way might just change the World for one person. To me The Everest Challenge is about the money raised to change the lives of disabled and disadvantaged children in ways most people cannot even imagine. It is about giving these children the sort of opportunities that you and I take for granted and providing the people that care for them the sort of assistance or respite that helps share the burden they shoulder everyday without complaint .
Deano's World 