Jon and Lizzie Bridge, Laura and Ollie Francis

We are two ordinary families in Crookes, Sheffield. Two women, two men, and four children under ten years old. We see our own faces reflected in the windows of the trains in Budapest station, the crowds in the reception centres, and the children playing in bombed-out streets across the Middle East and beyond. We cannot physically stand together with these people, our neighbours, nor ourselves give them the protection that they need. But we can walk alongside them in spirit, and that is what we plan to do.

What’s the problem we’re trying to solve?

4,206 km is the straight-line distance, on foot, from Aleppo in Syria to Sheffield in the UK. Many people – men, women, children, young and old, families just like us – have been embarking on this journey and others like it in the past months and years. They are fleeing conditions so hostile and hopeless that their desperation overcomes the trauma of leaving behind everything and everyone they know in search of sanctuary.

Why do we care about this?

We are two families just like those embarking on these unimaginably hard journeys. Like so many others we have been moved by the image of the little boy, who could be one of our sons, dead on that Turkish beach, or the families, which could be all of us, setting out to walk from Hungary to Austria. In all the debate over what Europe, or what the UK should do, or whether we could ‘take in’ refugees, our decided action is to raise money for charities supporting these neighbours in their need.

So what are we going to do?

Our idea is simple but (we hope) effective. We will show our support by ‘walking in their shoes’. As a group of ordinary people, we will run and walk, over the next six months, the equivalent of that journey from Aleppo to our doorsteps here in Sheffield.

Of course, we can’t literally go to Aleppo and start walking. We have jobs, and school, and all those other inconvenient truths. Not to mention the war. So we will use our journeys around Sheffield, our day to day trips and walks. We’ll have to change some of these trips, lose the car, miss the bus, and walk. We’ll have to add new journeys – running routes, longer walks. We may need to call on friends to join us on our travels.

We will log our distance, travel mindfully, imagine our progress along the route from Syria to the UK, research real conditions and people’s stories from the places we virtually pass through, and seek sponsorship for every step of the way. This money will go to charities which support refugees in the UK (especially in Sheffield), the persecuted overseas, and migrants in crisis everywhere.

Our challenge is to complete our ‘journey’ by Easter 2016 – Sunday, March 27th. That is a tall order, even for four adults and four children contributing to a combined total. We’re talking around 25 km per day, every day, from the end of September 2015. On our blog goamileintheirshoes.org we will regularly post our progress and report on our experiences as we seek to raise awareness among ourselves and our community.

All we ask is for as many people as possible to sponsor £1 per km.