Fun and the raising of funds are the main aims of these events, but participation doesn’t just happen overnight. Each volunteer has undergone a rigorous training regime in order to attain the fitness levels needed just to get to the start line. But the hours of training could not fully prepare the team for the pain and discomfort endured in the actual event.
Tom O’Hagan, CEO of Virtual1, and one of the team members, commented, “Virtual1 is a young, vibrant company, with a set of employees to match. Each day we face the ‘it cannot be done’ in our business lives, so tackling the Spartan Race was an obvious choice for us. The team wasn’t made up solely of fitness enthusiasts, but the whole group worked to get everyone round the course, which is the way we approach our everyday business. I’m very proud of everyone who took part and really appreciate those who supported us.”
The whole Virtual1 team is dedicated to supporting Restless Development, our partner charity, and this is just one of the events included in this year’s calendar. We smashed our £5,000 target, with over £7,000 raised to date, which is a magnificent achievement and one which will benefit Restless Development greatly.
Restless Development, is an international development charity that aims to empower young people across the world, who might otherwise be caught in a spiral of unemployment, poverty, lack of education and poor access to health services. Currently working in 8 countries in Africa and South Asia, they work by listening to the young people of poor communities and then train volunteers from these communities in a range of skills that can directly benefit their own community. Using young volunteers, who can more easily relate to the community volunteers, to provide the training, they help them to find the answers to the problems facing their communities. There is no right or wrong solution, as each community faces its own set of problems.
Tom’s very proud of his team, “This is a great team who continually rise to challenges, whether involving work or charity, and they throw themselves into them wholeheartedly, literally in this particular case!”
To find out more about Restless Development’s work with young people, visit www.restlessdevelopment.org