We joined Take Steps to make a difference!
Sophia aged 8 and Mahdi aged 6 from Tooting, South London, decided to get involved with Take Steps, our sponsored walking challenge, last September to join the fight for clean air. In this blog they share their experience and how important clean air is to them.
Sophia and Mahdi did their Take Steps challenge by walking to and from school every day, and even got out for long strolls with their mum on the weekends. Their mum, Marium, is a pharmacist who works with people with lung disease, and this gave the siblings even more motivation to make a difference. Through their tireless efforts, they raised an astonishing £1,229, and even made it into their local paper! This was all in the spirit of reducing their impact on the air pollution problem in South London, and this year, they want to do it all again, but bigger and better! Their mum helped them to write this blog about their experience.
Our Take Steps journey
“There is lots of traffic and pollution on the roads and we wanted to actively travel to school and clubs, so we didn’t add to the traffic. Our mum is a respiratory pharmacist and we have learned a lot about people with lung conditions as a result. We wanted to help them too!
2020 was a very strange year because of coronavirus, but we have some really positive memories to look back on from our Take Steps achievements. Not only did we get to raise money for a cause we care about, but we got to discover new places, get healthy through walking, and do our bit to reduce air pollution.
We fundraised by contacting all of our friends and family and sharing the challenge on social media. We got so much support from everyone and even our school helped by promoting our fundraising in their newsletter and Twitter feed and by contacting the local press for us. It felt amazing to have so many people behind us and supporting our challenge! Our main supporter was our mum who motivated us to keep on walking, reminded people to donate and took us to some amazing places. Each day, we set out for our walk, and were able to explore our neighbourhood and the local green spaces. We even went up to Box Hill and enjoyed a day out walking in Richmond Park. We loved getting involved with the fancy dress challenge, which helped us raise even more money! We also managed to feature in our local paper, the Wandsworth Times.
Climate change and air pollution are huge problems. Unless people our age help do something about it, we’ll be the ones who pay. That’s why we want to do everything we can, by continuing to fundraise and setting an example to other children to protect our cities and fix our air pollution problems.
We can’t wait to get involved with Take Steps again in June and we think everyone should get involved with the fun too!
We want to help bring about cleaner air. Air pollution is putting our climate and local ecosystems at risk. It is also causing lots of lung conditions and makes it hard for people to breathe. We should work to make sure we have a better future and to make a difference”.
Make your voice heard and make a difference by joining the Take Steps challenge with us!
Walk any distance throughout June, when you want and where you want.
Find out more about our sponsored walking challenge and become a Clean Air Champion.
Where there’s Christmas, there’s hope
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