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Why I Donated to...

This is a feature from Issue 14 of Charitable Traveller. Click to read more from this issue.

More dog walker than mountain climber, Matt Wigginton, led a team of 15 to climb Mount Kilimanjaro and raise essential funds for Ben, the automotive industry charity.

We reached the summit of Kilimanjaro as the sun was coming up and at that moment nothing else mattered. It simply felt incredible and the emotions were totally overwhelming – there were a lot of tears from all 15 of us! 

Thanks to Covid delaying our plans, this moment had been more than two years in the making. At times, I’d thought we’d never make it, and that was before we arrived in Tanzania to biblical rain on day one. 

Kilimanjaro is Africa’s highest mountain at 5,895m and it takes five and a half days to climb, but only a day and a half to get back down, and that’s one reason why it’s so challenging. To acclimatise on the way up, we had to walk at a pace of about one kilometre an hour – that’s slower than the shuffle people do around Ikea. And it’s really hard to walk that slowly for eight to 12 hours a day. Simply putting one foot in front of the other becomes a huge challenge. But if we walked any quicker we wouldn’t have made it to the top because the altitude would have knocked us out.

The metaphor of slowing down and simply focusing on the next step wasn’t lost on me or any of the others. I’d organised the challenge on behalf of Ben, the support service charity for people who work in the automotive industry, and in the team were motor industry leaders and senior managers in the design, retail and manufacturing sectors, aged from mid 30s to mid 60s. For all 15 of us the act of slowing down to achieve our collective goal was a lesson in itself. 

I wanted to do the challenge because I didn’t just want to sign people up for the climb then watch from the sidelines. There’s a lot going on in my family at the moment – my mum has Parkinson’s and I support my in-laws who have dementia and live with us – so it was important to me that I did something for myself. And now I’ve done it I think I’m invincible!

The obvious highlight was reaching the summit, but every day had its high points as we formed a tight-knit bond sharing jokes and encouragement, appreciated the sun rise every day, and metaphorically and physically helped each other climb the rocks in our path. 

We all realised we couldn’t have done this alone, and that’s something we’ll all be taking with us from Kilimanjaro. The climb gave us time to appreciate the challenges our colleagues face, and to face our own mental battles too.

We’d been able to see the peak of Kilimanjaro since day two and at times it felt like we’d never reach the top. But the one thing that spurred us on was the fact that if we reached the top, and we reached our fundraising goal of £300,000, that’s enough money to fund our industry helpline for a whole year.

That helpline is the first point of call for 30-odd thousand families a year, and for us to raise enough money to ensure that every single call gets answered, and everybody who needs help when they’re struggling or in crisis, felt incredible.

Make a Change

About 823,000 people work in the automotive industry – Ben provides support for life for them and their dependents. Click here to find out more. 

This is a feature from Issue 14 of Charitable Traveller. Click to read more from this issue.