This Sunday – 15 April – sees Ewa O’Neill and Anita (Frankie) McKenna running in the Paris marathon. It’ll be the first time that either of them have run this distance and they’ve been training hard to prepare for the big day. We’d like to ask you to sponsor their run to raise funds for Tacugama’s running costs and community outreach programme.
Many of you will have seen the result of Ewa’s support for Tacugama – our calendars, postcards, posters, leaflets, stationery and many other items are all thanks to her creative talent. Based in Sierra Leone for two years and now living in Nepal, Ewa and husband Dominic are very good friends and supporters of Tacugama. Ewa’s been thinking about running a marathon for some time and was persuaded by friends last November that it was time to change thoughts to action in time for Paris. Frankie has been volunteering as Tacugama’s programme and fundraising manager for almost four years and when Ewa mentioned Paris, she thought that it sounded like a good idea to join in despite not having run seriously for a very long time!!
Ewa training in Kathmandu
The 5 months since clicking an “enter” button on a website from the comfort of a chair have flown by and seen Ewa and Frankie hit the road and put in some significant miles in preparation for Sunday’s run. They were due to be joined in the run by Chris and Teresa Allewell who also became friends and supporters of Tacugama while in Sierra Leone. Very sadly Chris was forced to drop out with a very serious back injury in March, we wish him a speedy and full recovery.
Chris and Teresa helping to rescue Benita
We’d like to thank Air France KLM who have generously supported Frankie’s participation be providing a return flight on their service that runs from Freetown to Paris. The photo below shows Jack Urlus and Toyin Alaran presenting Frankie with her ticket.
Frankie receives her free ticket from Air France KLM
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We’d also like to thank IMATT (International Military Advisory and Training Team) in Sierra Leone for giving Frankie access to their facilities to support her training.
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We wish Ewa and Frankie lots of luck for Sunday and hope that you’ll be able to support them also. If you would like to sponsor them there are several options:
- http://www.justgiving.com/TacugamaMarathon – we can claim an additional 25% on top of what you donate through Giftaid if you’re a UK taxpayer
- http://www.tacugama.com/donate.html – you can use our paypal account to donate through the links on this page and there’s also the details of a Euro bank account that you can transfer directly to.
Thank you – we’ll let you know how they get on!
