ITVET Road to Hana challenge for our charity of the year

It was announced in May 2021 that Wiggly Willow is ITVET’s nominated charity of the year! Sitting in the heart of Bishop’s Stortford, Wiggly Willow are a café that delivers work experience and training for adults with special needs. At ITVET, we invest in our local community. We noticed the great work of the not-for-profit organisation Wiggly Willow and we wanted to say thank you. We provide full IT support for our charity of the year. This entails assisting them in creating a new website, sharing our digital skills, and providing network connectivity. We also fundraise in any way we can for the organisation. This takes us back to our June challenge.

Planning our challenge

As a team, we embarked on a walking challenge. We set our expectations high. Only one challenge matched these expectations. It had to be Mount Everest.

A reality check

With a global pandemic and work commitments standing in our way, we had to think outside of the box. While we wouldn’t reach the top of the world’s highest mountain in person, we could still walk the 8,849 m, virtually.

The Mount Everest virtual challenge

We used a challenge created by The Conqueror. The virtual app based challenge tracks the miles you rack up. Whether that’s from walking, cycling, or running. Each step was progress towards reaching the summit of the world’s highest peak.

The team could digitally see each other’s progress and locate their steps on the map of Everest. At the end of the challenge, everyone who completed the 40 miles was awarded a medal.

Setting off on June 1st

The sights of Everest vs home

Throughout the month of June, we pushed ourselves to meet our team target. During the journey, we explored the virtual surroundings of Everest on street view using The Conqueror app. Our team also got to explore new local routes as they clocked up their challenge steps. Whilst our local views didn’t match the Himalayan Mountain Range, there were still some amazing sights to be seen.

Teamwork

There was plenty of encouragement from our team during the challenge via Microsoft Teams. We encouraged our families, friends, and pets to join us on our walks. Our team shared screenshots when key milestones were hit.

A nostalgic experience

For one member of the team, this was a familiar experience. Our Senior Marketing Manager, Michelle (pictured below), had previously made the iconic journey to the base camp of Everest 16 years earlier.

Michelle enjoyed seeing her progress in street view of Everest and receiving postcards when she hit her milestones.

The results of our charity challenge

Impact on Wiggly Willow

The team raised £460 for the charity. This money will contribute toward the great service Wiggly Willow provides. Wiggly Willow is currently moving into bigger premises and increasing the support they give to members of the community. The money we raise over the year will help their great efforts.

Planting trees

The Conqueror virtual challenge app plants a tree for every 20% of the challenge completed. With 14 of us participating, our team have helped to plant 70 trees! This provided fantastic encouragement throughout the challenge. The Conqueror has already planted 450,000 trees since August 2020.

This event was the first of many fundraising opportunities for our nominated charity of the year, Wiggly Willow. It was an enjoyable experience that brought our team together and pushed us to get outside and move. If you would like to contribute to our fundraising, you can do so here.