Former Amery Hill student Ed Hubbard, who plays fly-off for the 1st XV, is part of a Nottingham University charity expedition to Kilimanjaro which is taking 250 students to the roof of Africa and then onto volunteering projects around Tanzania this summer.

Ed is hoping to raise £2,200 from his climb. He will do it the hard way: he will battle temperatures as low as -25C (colder than an industrial freezer), snow, fog and altitude sickness on his six-day ascent to the summit which, at 5895 metres tall, stands almost 4 miles vertically above sea level.

It costs only £8 to put a child, who otherwise has no hope of an education, through school for a year but Childreach want to work with hundreds of thousands of otherwise vulnerable children, so support from the public is crucial to its work.

After the climb, Ed will be volunteering with Childreach in villages around the mountain, working on building and healthcare projects, and even doing some teaching in local schools.

”This is a huge challenge for me, but it is something that I greatly looking forward to, I am really excited about meeting the children whose lives have been helped and transformed by my sponsorship money,” says Ed.

Childreach International is a global youth development charity that works to alleviate poverty and bring education, safe water and healthcare to the world’s poorest and most vulnerable children, who are often orphaned by AIDS.

Visit their website for more information on the trip, or Child Reach for more information on the charity.

To sponsor Ed, you can call him on 0142087709 or 07732188034 or visit his Just Giving web page.