Like most 16 year olds living in the UK, I take much of my life for granted and often forget how lucky I am. I live at home with a loving and supportive family around me, I have never experienced real fear and I always feel warm and never hungry. I go to an amazing school and I spend my time having fun with my friends, playing sport and revising for my GCSEs that are coming up this summer. However, for most Syrians who are my age, their lives could not be more different to my own. War in their homeland has brought devastation to their lives; it has left their homes flattened, their families dead, they feel frightened, cold and hungry, and things they used to do every day like going to school, having fun with their friends, playing sport and studying, just like I do every day, are things that they can only dream about doing now. I feel that I have to try to do something to help them, to give them some hope and not just be one of the people who sit and watch events in Syria unfold on TV or on my iPhone news alerts! So, I am going to attempt to summit Mont Blanc in aid of Children on the Edge.

At 4,810m Mont Blanc is the highest peak in Europe, one of the ‘Seven Summits’ of the World and my post GCSE challenge! I have started training as I need to be marathon fit to give myself the best chance of reaching the summit. For those of you who know me well, getting out of bed at 6.30am most weekdays to go to the gym really is not at all easy. My last GCSE is on 21st June so after a few days celebrating the end of exams and no more Physics or Chemistry ever, I will be flying out to Chamonix. I will be training out there for a few days to acclimatise to the altitude and to experience summiting on lower peaks and then I will set out on my climb at the beginning of July.

Children on the Edge is a small Sussex based charity that helps the children of the world who are most desperately in need. They are currently working in Lebanon to set up, equip and run tented schools in the Syrian refugee camps and donations really do make a difference to the work they do there. It costs £1,800 to provide all the materials and labour to build and equip one tented school, and £995 to pay the salary of one teacher for a term. Safe water for a year and heating in winter for a school only costs £250. £25 is enough to provide exercise books, pencils and all other materials for a pupil in one of these schools and £10 will buy a child a warm coat. 

I know that there are many calls on everyone’s generosity but I hope you feel that you can contribute something to help the children and young people of Syria. By giving them the gift of education now, we will give them hope and the ability to rebuild their lives and their country in the future. They deserve to have some hope in their dark and desperate lives.

Thank you for taking the time to visit my Just Giving page and my sincere thanks for any donations you are able to make.

Max Ali Sutton

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