Fundraisers

Renewal of Health for All Motorcycle Fleet thanks to Triumph Tiger 800 Club, AUSAID and Astra

After more than a decade of service the Health for All motorcycle fleet is being renewed thanks to generous support from the Triumph Tiger 800 Club in the UK (3 vehicles), AUSAID (2 vehicles) and Astra International (3 vehicles)

Thanks to this assistance eight of the thirteen original motorcycles from 2002 have been replaced and the new motorcycles are already providing much-needed healthcare transport to Indonesian villages.

Tiger 800 Motorcycle Forum Makes Significant Donation to Motorcycle Outreach Charity

130 Tiger 800 riders from 20 countries around the world, including Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Brazil, USA, Canada, UK & Europe have raised over £1500 for Motorcycle Outreach in just 12 weeks.

The group, all members of the Tiger 800 Forum, ran a photo competition of owners’ bikes in different parts of the world throughout last summer. The best photos (of over 200 submitted) were selected to produce a 2013 calendar and 200 copies were sold and distributed to members all over the world between November and January.

With over 26,000 hits on the forum the project proved to be highly popular among the international Triumph community. It also demonstrates that with just a little effort, motorcycle groups can create a sense of community across international boundaries , raise money for good causes and generate a positive public image for motorcycling.

A representative from the group formally presented the cheque to Craig Carey-Clinch, Director of Motorcycle Outreach on the Triumph stand at the MCN & Carole Nash bike show on Friday, 15th February 2013.

Sam Manicom, the well-known adventure motorcyclist and long-time supporter of Motorcycle Outreach, attended the presentation.

Motorcycle Outreach works with Health Ministries and local projects in developing countries to provide properly managed and maintained motorcycles for use by healthcare workers. This enables mobile teams to provide health care to people living in remote villages where road access is poor.

The money raised will be used to buy a new motorcycle for the charity's project in Indonesia where the mobile health care team supports over 50,000 people living in remote villages on the island of Flores.

Craig Carey-Clinch said: “Motorcycle Outreach is delighted with the donation from the Tiger 800 Forum. Among our other activities this year, we are hoping to replace the motorcycles that are used by heath care workers in Flores, Indonesia and the donation will really help towards this. The existing bikes have been in use for over ten years, which shows the value of managing vehicles used in aid projects properly. We are also extremely grateful to Triumph Motorcycles who hosted the presentation on their show stand.”

Charity Ride from Tibet to Wales in aid of Motorcycle Outreach

Two brothers from South Wales, Mark and Nigel Crew, will set off on 21st April 2012 from Shanghai on a six-week adventure that will include riding a motorcycle and sidecar across the Himilayas, and a motorbike ride from Athens to the Caspian sea and back to Wales, They are raising money for the charity Motorcycle Outreach, which provides essential transport for healthcare workers in developing countries.

Nigel Crew explained

We have been planning this trip for 18 months. We will start from our youngest brother Jonathans home in Shanghai and then head to Lhasa. There we join a group of eight veteran motorcycles and sidecars and a film crew. We will then ride from Lhasa in Tibet to Kathmandu in Nepal, including visiting Mount Everest base camp.

In the meantime our motorbikes are being transported to Athens. We will the collect them and head north east to cross Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan to reach Baku on the Caspian sea. Then we head all the way back to Wales, collecting money all the way.

Mark Crew added:

We have wanted to raise money for this charity (www.motorcycleoutreach.org) for some years. They do a lot of work in the remote areas of Indonesia, including delivering essential midwifery services. When Jonathan lived in Indonesia his wife Laura had a very difficult birth delivering the twins Emily and Felix. Fortunately she had access to good medical facilities, but in remote areas, without charities such as Motorcycle Outreach, the outcome could have been very different.

For more information visit www.bikezen.co.uk or follow the brothers on Twitter @NickC46, @badlydrawnk9 and @warmgazpacho

Kilimanjaro Trek in aid of Motorcycle Outreach

On the 16th to the 27th September 2009 I, Derek Skinner, will be following in the footsteps of the inspirational Simon Milward (1965-2005) and climbing, scrambling and puffing my way up 5,895 m to the top of Kilimanjaro. Simon climbed the world's highest free standing mountain in 2005. I hope to stand where Simon stood on top of Kilimanjaro.

I'm doing this

1: to test myself as a person

2: in the memory of Simon

3: to raise as much money as possible for Motorcycle Outreach.

I don't need to tell you the great job being done delivering healthcare to the outlying villages in the poorest and most remote regions in the world.

Raising as much as possible (with your help) for Motorcycle Outreach I hope I can do my bit so they can carry on the great work they do.

So please donate on http://www.justgiving.com/derekskinnerkilimanjarotrek

In September 2009, Derek Skinner successfully climbed Kilimanjaro. For more info...

Successful ascent of Kilimanjaro in aid of Motorcycle Outreach

I looked up towards the silhouetted rim of the mountain and wondered if the stars that I saw twinkling in the night sky just above the rim were actually just head torches from other people, beaming brightly in the cold night.

"I just hope it's stars," I thought to myself, "because that's one heck of a climb still to go to reach my final goal at the top of the highest free standing mountain in the world." Then I realised that the stars were moving, pressing on, "pole pole" (slowly slowly in Swahili).

So that's what I did, pressed on - one foot in front of the other, with the altitude, the scree and the rocks making every inch hard work - until I could see the sun peeking its weary head over the glaciers of Mount Kilimanjaro. Then my spirits rose, my steps became lighter and I knew that within a few minutes I would be standing on top of the mountain that had seemed such a distance away last January yet now was no distance at all.

So it was that at 6am on 24th September 2009 I reached the plateau at 5,895meters and walked the short distance to the sign which stated that congratulations were in order because I was standing at Uhuru Peak, Tanzania (where Simon Milward had stood all those sunrises ago) and I let out a short breath and said . "I've done it!"

Now reality set in, as it was damned cold up there, but you have to try and take it all in quickly because you have so little time. I gave my camera to Jason and he kindly took the photograph of me in the place where many a weary soul has stood, by that very unique worn out piece of wood.

Gloves off and it's my turn to take snapshots of the beautiful landscape around me, but intense cold has a habit of making you want warmth so after about 15 minutes it was time to leave the summit of the volcano and start the 6-hr-plus climb back down to camp Barafua at 4,600 metres.

It's always a strange feeling to leave somewhere you have always dreamed of being, so I stretched out my arms to feel the last blast of cold air and to thank the wind that took me to this place before I started weaving my way back down Kilimanjaro.

The rest, as they say, is history but on my eight days of trekking up and down Kilimanjaro I have come to respect anyone doing the same. Believe me, there are few that walk its sacred paths because this is not an easy climb. OK you may have porters carrying your tents and various other bits for you but you still have to conquer your weariness and the altitude, and you are still roughing it on a mountain that can turn misty and cold and wet at anytime.

Some nights were cold but, hey, I still got up at 2am to have a pee in the woodshed they call the "long drop" (ooh that smell!) and walked back to my tent looking up at the clear night sky with millions of stars looking back at me (well really it was minus something, because I couldn't feel a thing!) But the point is, you have to push yourself to make the summit of Kilimanjaro, so fair play to everyone in history that has made it there.

To all my friends, family and all the folks who put their hard work into helping me raise the money for Motorcycle Outreach in memory of Simon, I thank you very much.

Also all that donated their hard earned cash.

Also those that should have, but didn't. I forgive you.