A guest post by David Russell, UK Coordinator of Survivors Fund (SURF)
On Friday 2nd October, I will be undertaking my most ambitious fundraising challenge to date: to complete my 32-marathon challenge with a 100+ mile run around London.
The 31 marathons I have completed this year to date now seem but a warm-up for this final push to cross the finishing line and in so doing raising vital funds for Survivors Fund (SURF). 100 miles to mark the 100 days of genocide. 32 marathons in memory of each year since the genocide.
The plan is to head off in the early hours to pick up the Green London Way trail which passes by the road round the corner from my home in London. And to try make it back within 24 hours.
I will be self-supported, and in preparing for the adventure ahead, an equal challenge to the training, has been getting my head around the navigation required. Hopefully I have that now prepared so I do not lose my way in the rarely explored territory of South London!
When I started this challenge back in January, I was not entirely certain I would complete it. Having the motivation of the generous donations already received, totalling over £5,000, has been a massive incentive to keep on running, even on those days when I have not entirely felt it.
As I come to this last leg, the timing of it seems appropriate, as just this past week the Crown Prosecution Service, for the first ever time, brought charges in the UK relating to the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.
This has been a campaign for justice in the UK that SURF has supported for almost fifteen years. And is testament to the importance of the ongoing work, along with the principal focus on support to survivors themselves in Rwanda, that underlines the need, even 32 years on from the genocide, for a dedicated organisation such as SURF.
For me personally, supporting this cause has been a thread through my entire professional career. I was introduced to SURF’s Founder, Mary Kayitesi Blewitt, back in 2004 through work then I was undertaking with Holocaust survivors as a founding trustee of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.
Succeeding Mary as the director of SURF in 2009, I visited Rwanda 15 times in the 5 years I was in post, and I was incredibly moved by the difference that the organisation made in the lives of the thousands of survivors it supported through the funding we had then in place from amongst others Comic Relief, Big Lottery Fund and the UK Department for International Development.
Today, neither Comic Relief or Big Lottery Fund have active programmes to which we can even apply, and DfID no longer exists (as now absorbed into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office). As such, we are dependent on other sources of funders to enable our work, which is why your support can make such a difference.
It is never easy to ask for money, and at times even harder to give it. But needs must. One of my inspirations for the work that I do, Dame Hilary Blume, taught me that being asked to give is an opportunity, as she said when I interviewed her: “I give to those that take the trouble of asking.”
I have been incredibly fortunate to succeed Dame Hilary as director of the charity she founded, The Charities Advisory Trust, which through its Good Gifts initiative, is one of the vital funders of the work of Survivors Fund (SURF). So you can always support our work through buying a present – which range from goats to solar lamps to even prize bull semen(!) – in future from there.
As I prepare to run off, then any support that you could offer will naturally be dearly appreciated. For those that have donated already, a BIG thank you! For those interested in doing so, then by donating through GiveMatch we can leverage your generosity two-fold (as we will secure the required follow-on donations to enable that). In advance, sincerely, thank you.