Schoolgirl raises £5,000 for charity from 100km walk to school challenge

A mother and daughter from rural Bristol have battled wind, rain and mud to complete a 100km walk-to-school challenge and raise £5,000 for primary schools in rural Kenya.

Freya Hyslop, an 11-year-old year 7 pupil at Kingswood School in Bath, and her mother Sarah, a teacher at the school, walked the 9km between their home and school at the start and end of every day last week in aid of the charity African Promise.

Speaking after completing their final walk on Friday afternoon, Freya and Sarah said:

“The last week has given us an insight into the challenges that so many children around the world face each day just to get an education. Getting up at 5am and arriving at school already tired after two hours walking with the prospect of the same walk home after school has been hard! But we are lucky that there has been food, water and comfortable classrooms waiting for us at school; so many children are not so fortunate. For us this has just been a week-long challenge but for children in Kenya it is an everyday reality and that has been our motivation when the going got tough.”

Thanks to the generosity of family, friends, neighbours, the school community, and strangers, the pair have raised more ten times their original fundraising target for the charity. The charity’s founder and director Charles Coldman explained how this money would help the charity, its eight partner schools and their more than 3,000 pupils in Kenya:

“At a time when there are so many demands on our little charity’s limited financial resources these are very useful additional funds indeed. It could pay for the food for more than 35,000 lunchtime meals or more than half-a-million litres of clean water, both of which are critically-needed as our project area reels from the impact of a prolonged drought.”

He continued: “What Freya and Sarah have done is hugely admirable and inspiring. We are very proud of what they have achieved in the name of our charity and look forward to showing them how we use the funds their efforts have raised.”

Freya does not expect this to be the end of her relationship with the charity, saying:

“I hope to keep raising money for this worthy cause and I’ve even talked about making this an annual event but first I am looking forward to a lie-in!”

You can still support and reward the pair’s efforts by making a donation to their fundraising page at justgiving.com/sarah-hyslop.