Opulous Innovation’s contracts manager Charlotte Casey is running the 2019 Colchester Half Marathon to raise money for the Solar Sister charity. Keep up with her training and learn more about how you can support this fantastic charity via her regular blogs.
Our Charity Solar Sister
Solar Sister trains and supports women to deliver clean energy directly to off-grid homes in rural African communities. They provide essential services and training that enable women entrepreneurs to build sustainable businesses in their own communities. Since 2010 Solar Sister has helped over 1.4million across Africa with solar energy and clean cookstoves and has kickstarted over 3,400 clean energy entrepreneurs.
For an £80 donation 20 solar lights can be provided replacing expensive kerosene lamps. The value of these solar lights to a community comes at a much higher price than we can imagine. A Ugandan woman used a single solar light to help her chickens feed better, which in turn helped them lay more eggs that she could sell, boosting her income, allowing her to grow her farm, and eventually found a school where she teaches children how to read, write, and farm. Whilst we in the UK work to stop climate change by recycling and driving electric cars, these really small green acts can change somebody’s life immediately, allowing mothers to spend more time with their children instead of walking for six hours to collect fuel.
Let the training begin!
With 150 days to go until the race I completed my first training run last night. I haven’t completed a proper run since the 5k Race for Life in July so I knew it was going to be hard. But running shoes on and off I went!
I was aiming to run 5k for my first run and set a time to improve on over the coming months. Building up to 22k is going to take sometime, but with a proper training schedule I remain confident. My plan is to do one short run 5k and a one long run a week. For the 5k shorter run I will be building up my speed, aiming to increase my time each week, whilst my longer runs will increase in distance over time eventually reaching the 22k goal. I will be using my Apple watch to track my heart rate and pace etc. Despite a very cold wind my first run went better than expected.
To find out how I’m getting on please keep checking back for my training updates. And to sponsor this electrician running for Solar Sister, please check out my Just Giving page!
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