One of our vets at Strule Veterinary Services, Kim van de Wiel, has taken it upon herself to raise money for a good cause! She is going to travel to Tanzania next January to volunteer and decided she wanted to fundraise for two organisations that work on local Tanzanian projects: Mission Rabies and Heifer International. To make the fundraising a little bit more exciting, Kim has challenged herself to climb the five highest peaks in in Northern Ireland (Slieve Donard), Ireland (Carrauntoohil), Scotland (Ben Nevis), England (Scafell Pike) and Wales (Snowdon) over the next few months. For more information on her motivation for this challenge, visit www.gofundme.com/kimsfivepeakchallenge.

What are Mission Rabies and Heifer International?

Mission Rabies is a UK based organisation that runs dog vaccination campaigns and educational programs in Tanzania, but also in other parts of the world. Rabies is a deadly, but neglected tropical disease, which affects both animals and people in the world’s poorest parts. Every year, the disease takes up to 60.000 lives, many of which are children. Around 99% of the human cases are caused by rabies-infected dog bites. Consequently, many healthy dogs are inhumanely killed every year out of fear of contracting this disease. To truly eliminate rabies, long term vaccination projects and educational programmes are necessary in areas where the disease is endemic. Controlling rabies is not only critically important to prevent death in humans and animals, but it also alleviates its burden on local and national economies. Mission Rabies’ goal coincides with the World Health Organisation, which is to eliminate rabies worldwide by 2030. For more information, visit www.missionrabies.com.

Heifer International is a US based organisation that works to reduce poverty and hunger through community development programmes all over the world. With their projects they try to strengthen the capacity of local, small scale farmers to attain sustainable livelihoods and establish food security. Heifer provides animals and agricultural training to families in extreme poverty. These families will then pass on their gift by sharing the animal’s offspring and agricultural knowledge with other families, creating sustainable self-supporting communities. As part of the East Africa Dairy Development project, Heifer Tanzania focusses on increasing the milk production for smallholder farmers, creating infrastructure to process this milk and distributing it to local school children. This ‘Milk Moovement’ will not only increase the economy of Tanzanian farmers, but also empowers young children to focus on learning instead of hunger. For more information, visit www.heifer.org.

Show your support by donating!

If you would like to back Kim’s challenge by making a donation, please visit www.gofundme.com/kimsfivepeakchallenge or put a donation in the donation boxes in our Newtownstewart or Omagh branch. Every donation, however small, will be appreciated! All donations will be divided equally over both organisations and paid directly to them at the end of this fundraise. Strule Vets are in full support of this fundraise, go Kim go!

Asante sana! Thank you very much!