Supporters tackled the highest peak in the Atlas Mountains and raised over £7,000 for World Vision

Matrix & Rhetorik Solutions are two incredibly committed and inspiring organisations who sponsor through World Vision. They recently raised over £7,000 for us and we wanted to find out what inspired them. In this blog, David Young, the Marketing Director of the company talks about their involvement with World Vision:

How it all started

Back in July 2010 we were looking for a charity partner whose philanthropic vision was aligned in some way with our own commercial objectives and we chose World Vision. We offer clear intelligence to financial services companies to help them make the best of the opportunities available in their market. In a similar way, World Vision provides opportunities to children, in deprived areas which lack proper infrastructure, to give them the best start in life. The similarity of our processes, in spite of the different motivations behind them, has encouraged us all to pledge our support to this excellent cause.

Initially the sponsorship was just linked to our clients buying a licence, but we decided to branch out a bit by sponsoring children instead of sending corporate Christmas cards (and sending the pictures of the children we sponsored to our clients). Then in 2011, our Marketing Manager decided to cycle from John O’Groats to Land's End and we suggested that he should do it for World Vision - he raised enough to sponsor another three children. Now we sponsor around 40 children through the extraordinary community projects World Vision manage across Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe.  

Going the extra mile

By 2012, our involvement with World Vision had blossomed into something deeper and more meaningful so we decided that we would broaden the sponsorship into a regular annual challenge that was open to all members of staff. In 2012, Katerina Parkins -Executive Assistant to our CEO - and I arranged an expedition to complete the Three Peaks Challenge, which involved eight members of staff from both our London and Wokingham offices. We raised £4,000 and the team was (for the most part) successful in completing the ascent and descent of Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon in 24 hours.

By now the momentum was really growing, so we proposed an international challenge for this year. We chose Morocco as we wanted to find a difficult challenge but one which did not require technical expertise to make the ascent. Jebel Toubkal ticked all of these boxes. We all had a training routine for the final 5 weeks of the challenge - personally I went running and swimming most days and even spent three weeks without alcohol to try to lose some weight to make me more nimble on the mountain. We initially had 13 members of staff who were keen to take on the challenge. After some visa issues, we ended up with a slightly smaller team raising money. We each had a personal target of £400 to raise and we kept the competition going by emailing everyone with weekly updates of our own sponsorship levels. We hit the target just as we left!

The Jebel Toubkal challenge in Morocco

On Friday 28th June, a group of 11 of us from Matrix Solutions and our sister company Rhetorik Solutions left the UK to embark on the personal challenge of hiking up North Africa’s highest mountain. Standing at 4,167 m (13,671 ft) the challenge was no mean feat given the soaring 40 degree plus temperatures in the vast African mountainous terrain.

With only two days to complete this challenge in which the team had a target to raise over £5,000 for our corporate charity, World Vision, we had our work cut out. We had a gruelling 8-hour-hike up on Saturday 29th. On that night, we all slept in a refuge called Refuge des Mouflons. It was very basic, and we had a big dormitory for all of us - girls on one side of the room, boys on the other. We had to go to sleep by about 9pm as we were getting up at 4.30am the next day to complete a further 3.5-hour-hike up on Sunday 30th. All 11 members of staff made it to the top at 9.15am. On the same day, we made it back down to the bottom in 7 hours.

We travelled back to Marrakech after 20 hours of walking, ascending and descending in the oppressive heat. The well-deserved day of relaxing in Marrakech on Monday was a good opportunity to explore the souks and hammams.

Whilst the challenge was completely exhausting, it was a fantastic achievement, and we would like to sincerely thank everyone who sponsored our efforts for such a good cause. We are already planning our next year's challenge which was excitedly discussed on the plane on our way home!

This year as well as the fundraising we have also had a sponsorship party to celebrate the success of the climbers and showed photos from the event and had a raffle with prizes which raised a further £470. Finally, I am pleased to announce that Matrix & Rhetorik Solutions staff conquered Jebel Toubkal and raised over £7,000 in aid of World Vision.

David Young, Marketing Director at Matrix Solutions

Thanks so much to David for sharing their experiences and for their commitment and continued generosity towards World Vision. If you have been inspired by this amazing bunch of people and would like to take on a fundraising challenge yourself, click here to visit our website and order your fundraising pack. If you have any comments or questions, head over to our Facebook page here.