Mt Kilimanjaro in Africa - site of the Humpty Dumpty Foundation's Ultimate Burn (picture Mike Dowling 2008)
Right now 21 Australians are camped in sub-zero temperatures at 3950m above sea level on Mt Kilimanjaro in a bid to raise $2 million for a children’s charity.
Among the climbers are Paul Francis, the man who started the Humpty Dumpty Foundation in 1996, Federal Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey (who had the bright idea to climb Kili in the first place), 19-year-old Victorian Paralympian and world champion sprinter Kelly Cartwright, Channel 7’s Sunrise co-host, David Koch, paediatrician Jonny Taitz, and an assortment of businessmen, entrepreneurs, lawyers and financiers, one of whom took his wife.
It hasn’t been cheap: each climber had to raise $50,000 just to take part, and they are still raising money online as they climb up the highest free-standing peak in Africa. Since leaving for Africa last week, they’ve generated another $13,000 bringing the total so far to $1.328 million.
I’ve been speaking to Francis every day via satellite phone to get daily progress reports from the climb. The line is crackly and time-delayed but there is no doubting the excitement and energy in Francis’s voice. Or how tough the trek really is.
On Saturday, they climbed for six hours and ascended through the cloud line. Imagine that! “We are looking at the most amazing blue skies and the snow-scattered peak of Kili,” he told me yesterday before setting off on a nine-hour trek over several kilometres that put them at 3950m ASL. “I know I get a bit emotional at times, but honestly, this is beyond our expectations.”
Anyone who knows Francis knows he does get a bit emotional. He is not afraid to cry at Humpty’s annual charity events.
At the 2008 Balmoral Burn charity dinner, he was moved to tears by country nurse, Helen Stevens, who talked about the tragic death of a three-year-old child because the hospital where she was admitted did not have a $3000 piece of equipment that would have saved her. What price life, right?
Paul Francis, founder of the Humpty Dumpty Foundation
Francis is an easy-going bloke who runs a tennis centre in north Sydney. For years, his members held a ball on the eve of the Wimbledon finals, and back in the early ’90s they decided to raise a bit of cash to help give the kids ward at the Royal North Shore Hospital a coat of paint. They raised $40,000 without even trying. The next year, they did it again, and raised more than $100,000.
From little things, big things grow. And it’s all about community involvement and local support.
In the past three years, Humpty has managed to raise more than $7 million most of which has been spent on buying vital life saving medical equipment for RNSH and other hospitals around New South Wales. Humpty also branched out to East Timor, where two clinics have been brought into the charity’s growing family. Net result: countless kids’ lives have been saved.
Here’s how it works: hospitals nominate an item that they need for the kids wards and give it to the Humpty medical committee which decides if it should be added to Humpty’s wish list. Things like stethoscopes don’t pass muster – governments should be buying them.
Once on the Wish List, the item will be bought by generous supporters at any of the three Humpty fund-raisers held each year – the ball (September 5), the Balmoral Burn sponsors’ dinner (last Friday of May each year), and the Good Egg thank you lunch.
The 2008 Balmoral Burn (the brain child of former rugby great and Wallaby legend, Phil Kearns) raised an unprecedented $2.2 million and this year 9000 people took part in the annual fun-run.
It’s a great system. Kids like Sophie Delezio, Andie Kearns (Phil’s daughter) and even Francis’s own children have benefited from Humpty-badged equipment. And you never know when you might need it, too.
Here’s the thing about Humpty’s Kili climb. All the trekkers have made huge sacrifices to be there. They’ve been in training for months and will be away from family, friends, personal and professional commitments for 12 days. Joe Hockey turned 44 on the mountain on Sunday and his wife is pregnant, but he is committed to the cause and, having dreamt up the Ultimate Burn as the climb has been dubbed, there was no way he wasn’t going to do it.
It is hard going. It’s cold. Actually, Francis says “it’s bloody freezing. Correction, below bloody freezing”. Kili is not for wimps, but the conditions won’t deter them.
The Good Eggs from the Kili Club are feeling bad while doing something goof for kids.
Help them if you can.
