HelpHound

Victoria Walker (username victoriaw) recently completed a climb to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro – the highest peak in Africa - in aid of Help for Heroes who provide support for wounded servicemen and women, raising over £3,600 (part of which was sponsorship from HelpHound). Read her account of her achievement below and check out the photo she had taken at the summit.

Well done Victoria!

If you would like to add to Victoria’s total by donating yourself, please click here
IMPORTANT - please add the letters HH to your donation note and HelpHound will donate an extra £1 for every one of our users who donates £1 or more.

Click the image to see Victoria holding her HelpHound T-Shirt on the summit!

The shortest distance in the world between tropical and arctic conditions by Victoria Walker (victoriaw)

“I recently took part in a challenge that involved travelling to Tanzania and climbing the highest freestanding mountain in the world. At 5896m high it is higher than Everest Base Camp and it is the shortest distance in the world between tropical and arctic conditions which meant that I had to be prepared for all weather conditions. With little training, a fear of insects and a hatred of camping I embarked on my mission to reach the summit in order to raise over £3000 for the charity Help for Heroes.
 
This charity is very close to my heart as my boyfriend is an officer in an infantry regiment and he will be deploying to Afghanistan in a couple of months. The charity has only been around for a couple of years but it has had huge coverage in the press and raised millions of pounds to support British servicemen and women who are injured in current conflicts. It is an extremely important charity which makes a point of having no political view on the advantages or disadvantages of the wars that British forces may be involved in. It is simply there to help those that need support and rehabilitation by providing the physical and mental aid that can be expensive and difficult to find.
 
There are countless ways that I could have chosen to raise money for the charity but I thought that I should step completely outside of my comfort zone; my usual fitness regime being a walk between Oxford Circus and Bond Street. The climb was certainly tough but was made a lot easier by the group that I met at the airport (all 30 of us climbing Kili to raise money for H4H). Once I arrived in Tanzania I stayed in a hotel for one night, had my final showers and then headed to the Machame Gate to begin the trek.
 
Throughout the 6 days that it took to summit I passed from jungle, through ferns and brackens and finally to arctic conditions. It provided me with such fantastic scenery that the trekking was made a lot easier. However I think that it would have been virtually impossible without the group of porters who supported the group throughout the whole trip. They carried our luggage, set up camp for us each night, cooked our dinner and woke us up in the morning with mugs of hot tea, which were particularly welcome as we reached the highest camp and temperatures plummeted to well below freezing.
 
One of the biggest issues that we had to encounter was the effect that the altitude had on our bodies. Many in the group felt nauseous and had terrible headaches. I suffered from cerebral oedema and became dizzy and disorientated. I hallucinated that my feet were not attached to my body and followed them along a path for several hours! Luckily, the fantastic team that were guiding the group combined with the medical expertise of the Doctor helped me to get through it and recover so that I was well enough to attempt climbing to the summit.
 
The summit night was the most exciting part of the whole journey. I woke at 11pm to start trekking in the dark at midnight. As I set off all I could see were dots of light coming from the head torches of the people ahead of me. The sun rose as I was climbing and it was absolutely beautiful which provided the perfect backdrop to the difficult climb. The sun also brought warmth which was a welcome relief after the -18 degrees I had experienced earlier. At about 5am I looked up and saw Stella Point. This is the bottom of the ridge that leads the way to the summit, Uhuru Peak. I was about 200m away from the ridge and it took me over two hours to reach it. My mind was telling me to keep going but my body was so physically exhausted (mostly due to the lack of oxygen) that I could not move more than a few feet at a time without having to stop and catch my breath. The porters were fantastic at giving encouragement and supporting us whilst we all struggled to reach the top.
 
At Stella Point I had to decide whether or not I wanted to try and reach the summit. In my mind there was no way that I was going home without reaching the top so I continued at a snails’ pace until I reached the well known sign at the top of Kilimanjaro. I was overwhelmed and burst in to tears without really knowing why. I cannot describe the feeling of immense achievement, combined with complete happiness and utter exhaustion. The happiness quickly ebbed away as I realised I now had to walk all the way down again but almost four hours after I reached the summit and nearly 12 hours since I had started the ascent I was back at the camp.
 
It took another day and a half to reach the exit gate at the bottom of the mountain but the whole group was so elated that we had achieved what we set out to do that it flew by. Four people in my group unfortunately did not make it to the summit but they were satisfied with the height that they did manage to climb to and so were able to celebrate with us at the end.
 
The most important thing about the trip was that I managed to raise over £3400 for Help for Heroes. My friends and family, complete strangers and of course the team at HelpHound had enabled me to raise far more money than I thought was possible.”

If you would like to add to Victoria’s total by donating yourself, please click here 

IMPORTANT - please add the letters HH to your donation note and HelpHound will donate an extra £1 for every one of our users who donates £1 or more.

Sometimes the obvious needs to be stated. Caitlin Moran does so oh so eloquently. The general thust of her piece is that almost all the negatives that web-deniers perceive are in fact positives. I love her reasoning that the young binge drink because they have so much cash left over after downloading all their entertainment for free.

Do we really want to revert to snail mail (or even the dreaded fax)? do we resent the email that warns us that tickets for our favourite band are going on sale? Would we all rather spend half of Saturday in a supermarket rather than shop online? Would we ever have discovered that fabulous boutique in Hoxton by tramping the streets? Would we still rather trust the marketing departments of UK plc rather than the opinions of our fellow consumers? (OK, hands up, I slipped that puff for HelpHound in).

A thought-provoking read - see it here

What is the purpose of advertising? To let the market know you have a great product or service. That's not news to anyone. Why did advertising as we currently know it evolve? Because, as society became more fragmented with the onset of the industrial revolution, it was the most effective way of replacing word-of-mouth (which had become less effective as society became more mobile).

The modern web has brought people ('consumers' in marketing speak) back together. For the first time since we all lived in close communities people are freely and effectively communicating their views on businesses, services and products. Craigslist and eBay have already all but wiped out classified advertsiing (why would you pay for a classified ad if you knew there was a free classifieds platform online, accessed by millions of people every day?).

So - if you can buy and sell a used bicycle online (for free), why would you opt to be influenced by advertising when then same platform that brought you eBay could now bring you your fellow 'consumer's' opinions on products and services? Would you rather take the word of customers of businesses or believe their advertising? It's not rocket-science is it?

Conclusion? That great businesses should encourage their customers to shout about them on the web. Divert their advertising dollars into interacting with their customers online. Less great businesses will just have to get better, or fail (they are found out so fast by the web). Of course advertising and marketing will still have a role - but this will increasingly be directed at encouraging potential customers to listen to existing customers.

We may even find that salespeople (in the 20th century meaning of the term) become dispensable as well. If you doubt this just look at how businesses like Richer Sounds mobilise their customers to give potential customers confidence to buy from them once you have read half-a-dozen credible reviews the sales job is 90% done (it also happens that their salespeople are great as well).