Climbing for a cause

Two local mums have combined exercise, adventure and compassion in their charity, Care Climb.

Care Climb’s mission is to make a difference through “Adventures with Purpose”, where a team hikes the equivalent elevation of a chosen mountain to raise money for the chosen cause.

Care Climb co-founder Kaitlin “Kitty” Travers said she and fellow co-founder Amanda “Mandy” Menheere launched the charity after their 2019 trip to Nepal.

“We started Care Climb after we did the Annapurna circuit,” Travers said.

“COVID hit and we reflected on a lot of the amazing people we’d met over in Nepal on our climb, and we really wanted to give back to them because we knew essentially, they were out of work for the whole COVID period.”

“So, we came up with the concept of Care Climb, where we would essentially do a hike with the same elevation as Mount Everest.”

Travers said the first event was a success, and the first hike inspired the pair to keep going.

“We pulled together a bit of an event and lots of people attended and supported the cause, and we raised $6,000; we were able to send that back and help all of the porters and our guides, directly with that money. We sent it all back to them.

“One of our porters, he’d actually lost his whole home in a landslide, so the money that we sent back was able to rebuild a house for him.”

Travers said the pair, as mothers, were motivated both by their own unique love of adventure and their desire to set an example for their children.

“We’re both parents, we’ve both got two small children and we wanted to show them that the sense of giving back.

“We do a little bit of travel. We both run in a running ground, we’ve run some ultramarathons together, and we want to try to teach our children I think through this Care Climb that if you have a plan and you stick to it people will get involved, and to try and spark a bit of adventure, and giving back with our children.

“Our kids attended on the weekend, we ran another event on the weekend and they were able to join in, some of our other friends came along.”

On January 13, Care Climb hosted a group hike to raise money for Amani Children’s Home in Tanzania, where the pair are visiting in June 2023.

“Amani basically rescues homeless children in Tanzania, they take them off the streets, given them a home, give them a school uniform and an education and they try to connect them back in with their extended family.

“We’ve become ambassadors for them, so we’ll go over there in June and we’re going to do an outreach program with them.

“We’ll get to meet the children and go out to the slums where a lot of the children are rescued from, and it will just be a nice way for us to connect with Armani so we can really see what they are doing.

“As well as giving them the money we’re going to take some things over, soccer boots and Lego and things they need with the children’s home as well.”

The event itself was a huge success, and Care Climb will continue to raise funds and donations for Armani Children’s Home until June.

“It was a nice hot one, because we’re going to Tanzania we decided to do the same elevation as Mount Kilimanjaro given that is the highest mountain in Africa,” Travers said.

“Mandi and I ended up doing about seven laps of the You Yangs which is about 32km and about 1,800m elevation.

“People came along and just did that they could, so some people did 2 laps and that was enough by the time the heat kicked in.”

“On our website careclimb.com.au there is a link to our GoFundMe and we’ll have the link open right up until when we head off to Tanzania in June, and we’ll put some information up on if people have new soccer shoes, or Lego or something they can contribute for the kids over there.”