Take the Camino trail for Self Help Africa charity

One of the Midlands best-known charity fundraisers is looking for volunteers to join him on one of Europe’s most famous pilgrims walking routes, this year.

Clara’s Ronan Scully is hoping to organise another one of his Camino Treks in 2019 and is looking for participants to join him for a week-long trip along the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain, and to raise funds to support the work of Irish development charity Self Help Africa into the bargain.

Ronan has led Irish groups along sections of the Camino for the past three years, and is hoping to bring 20 or more Irish volunteers with him on the next two 100km trips, in late April and late September.

“We are planning two separate walks this year along the Pilgrim’s Way.” he said. The dates for the Camino trips are as follows he said. "We're doing the last 100km of the Classic Portuguese Way Camino, starting in Tui on the Portuguese Spanish border and finishing in Santiago de Compostela. The dates for this trip are from 26th April to the 4th May. And If all goes well we're also planning on doing another Camino in late September.

Participants are each asked to raise €2,000 to support their efforts, with this sum covering all costs of travel and accommodation, and also generating vital income to support the charitable cause.

The adoptive father of two children from Ethiopia, Ronan says that after a recent visit to East Africa the recent food crisis in East Africa – which left up to 20 million people dependent on relief aid, underlined to him both how important, and how valuable the work of Self Help Africa was to vulnerable households in Africa.

“We find it difficult to imagine being without food for any length of time, but in Ethiopia, Malawi, and in other countries where we work, we saw people who had been left with nothing at all. It’s difficult to explain that to your children that some can have the good fortune of a comfortable life, and others are barely able to survive.”

“We know that the work that we’re doing – supporting poor farming families to grow more food and grow produce can and is having a massive effect, yet there are still one in four people in Africa who cannot say that they will have enough to eat this year,” he said.