Duncan's Three Peaks Challenge
The Three Peaks Challenge is a mountain endurance challenge in Great Britain in which participants attempt to climb the highest peaks of each of the island's three countries. Whilst the challenge has no official rules or time restrictions, many participants try and complete it within 24 hours – and this is what our long standing supporter Duncan Innes and his colleagues at Marriott Harrison did in August this year.

The mountains climbed, in height order are Ben Nevis in Western Scotland (1344 m), Snowdon in North Wales (1085 m), and Scafell Pike in North-Western England (978 m). In all the challenge involves some 42 km (26 miles) of ascent and descent, with total travel approaching 765 km (around 475 miles).

After the challenge Duncan said:
“Well, we did it! Despite all three summits being in total cloud, some challenging conditions and definitely the worst homemade sandwiches on the planet, all three peaks were successfully climbed.”

Duncan Innes is a longstanding and active supporter of Task Brasil. Duncan first got involved with Task Brasil in 1995 and has, until recently, provided a great deal of support as a Trustee, advising Task Brasil and visiting our projects periodically. Everyone involved with Task Brasil is hugely grateful to Duncan for all he has done over the years, and mightily impressed by his fundraising and hill-walking abilities!

Duncan's efforts have so far raised nearly £5,000 for Task Brasil projects. You can still sponsor his effort by visiting http://www.justgiving.com/mhtaskbrazil

Notice from Task Brasil
Task Brasil had an incident relating to its water supply at Casa Jimmy recently. If you require details, please contact us..

No ultimo dia 28 de julho houve um incidente na Casa Jimmy envolvendo a companhia de fornecimento de Água, CEDAE. Colocamos-nos a disposição para quaisquer esclarecimentos e reiteramos o nosso compromisso em realizar nosso trabalho de encontro ao estatuto desta organização, ao ECA e os mais elevados princípios. Aproveitamos para agradecer seu contínuo apoio à Task Brasil , em benefício às crianças e adolescentes carentes.
Atenciosamente,
Task Brasil

Three Peaks Challenge

On the weekend of the 20th – 22nd June, 2008, 13 UK-based Accenture employees joined a team from the BP HR Operations and SAP Program to climb the three highest mountains in England, Scotland and Wales. In total, 26 colleagues from BP, Accenture and IBM took part, with the objective to complete the challenge within 24 hours and in doing so, raise over £5,000 for three charities nominated by BP Operations & SAP Programme team members. One of the selected charities was Task Brasil

Fundraising Effort
Although the challenge itself took place in June, the fundraising effort began in earnest several months before the big weekend. The team organized a car wash at the BP office in Staines, England, during which around 60 cars were washed raising £400. A raffle and auction with prizes generously donated by the Operations & SAP project team members raised over £2000. In addition a sweepstake on the 2008 Eurovision Song Contest and a pub quiz raised an additional £375. These efforts, when added to donations from friends and family, BP's “Match Giving Programme”, and Accenture’s “Giving Programme” raised an impressive £10,000, doubling the initial fund raising target. Andrew Dickinson, Manager T&OP, who helped organise the event was thrilled with the money raised by all involved “The fund raising has helped bring the whole team closer together and the final total of £10,000 is a phenomenal effort. The money raised is going to make a tangible difference to three very worthy causes, with the funds targeted to help improve schooling for children in Africa and South America.”

The Challenge
When the big weekend arrived, the team set off from London on the 20th of June and traveled by bus to Wales where they spent the night preparing for their challenge by debriefing on their route and resting for their fast approaching adventure. On Saturday morning, the team woke early to be greeted by heavy rain and very poor visibility (conditions the team would have to endure the whole weekend). The first challenge was to ascend the 1,085m up Mount Snowdon which was accomplished in a brisk 3.5hrs. After a quick lunch, they traveled north to Cumbria to begin their 978m ascent of Scafell Pike. The team did not get off Scaffell Pike until around 11pm and as the darkness set in for the night the team returned to their coach and set out for Scotland and the tallest and toughest challenge of them all....Ben Nevis. After a rather uncomfortable few hours attempting to get some sleep the team rose at 5am, and began their 1,344m ascent of Ben Nevis. The team successful completed the challenge at 7.55am in a time of 23hrs 55mins.
The team celebrated with a well deserved drink after their descent. Tony Marchak (Vice-President, BP HR Operations) summed up the team’s relief after they successfully completed the challenge and said “I want to congratulate you on completing the Three Peaks Challenge. I realise the demands of this challenge and the determination and effort required to climb the three mountains in 24 hours. This achievement is even more impressive given that you had to endure such terrible weather conditions throughout the entire event. You should be very proud of yourselves. We are all very proud of you.”

Task Brasil would like to extend our huge thanks too all in the Accenture Team:

Adam Krajewski, Ajay Parmar, Andreas Binnmyr, Andrew Dickinson, Dirk Reichling, Colin Sloman, Jonny Dighe, Ken Grant, Laura Watt, Liz Puttick, Megan Kimbell, Peter Choate, Siobhan Pollock,

Great Capital Run 2008

July saw this year’s great capital run in London’s Hyde Park. Task Brasil supporters Kevin Tredea (http://www.justgiving.com/kevintredrea), Ruth Weyman (http://www.justgiving.com/ruthweyman) and Richard Ashby (http://www.justgiving.com/richardashby) were kind enough to run for us and raised much needed funds for our work in Brasil.

Kevin said:
“Over the years I have always impressed with how Task Brasil have managed to help the street children and teenagers who live and work on the streets of Brazil and so

I felt that this year I will try to raise some money for the Task Brasil charity by doing the 10K Great Run in Hyde Park London.
The day went fantastically and I managed to run it in 53 minutes beating my last run by 6 minutes. I really hope to run for task Brasil again in the near future. “

Ruth said:
In May, when I started this (fundraising) page, I'd just come back from a trip to South America, including Rio de Janeiro. Lots of people come back from longer and more involved trips having witnessed first hand the poverty of Brazil's street children and wanting to do something to make a difference. I returned from my short holiday having witnessed the wealth of the other half and it's the juxtaposition that made me want to raise as much as I could. Imagine seeing a child begging in Chelsea. We only saw one child living rough because the streets of Ipanema where we were staying were lined with expensive houses behind security gates and shiny glass shop fronts. Seeing him curled up asleep one night on a piece of cardboard outside our hotel made up my mind to do something to donate to a charity that would help him.

According to Richard:
"This may not be climbing Everest, but for someone who never runs anywhere unless there's a ball to chase or a bus to catch I assure you this is tantamount to temporary madness. (...)
It was a lovely morning in Hyde Park and I think the race went about as well as I could hope, being rather an amateur at this sort of thing. I finished in 45mins 12seconds. This would have been enough to get me a podium finsh, had there been 605 podia..."

A big thank you to all 3 runners!!!

If you are interested in running for us we would love to hear from you! We have places in next year’s London Marathon so, if you are feeling really ambitious, please complete the form here and send it in to us!