Join our 4000 Mile Challenge and support young refugees!

It’s that time of the year again, to join our 4000 Mile Challenge!

As you may have heard from the Hope for the Young team, we’re holding our annual fundraising event, the 4000 Mile Challenge from the 1st-30th September.

Hope for the Young works to break down the obstacles to young refugees and asylum-seekers’ education and wellbeing by providing mentoring, advocacy and financial support. Across 2023-24, we worked alongside 183 young people from 42 countries, providing support through grants, advocacy and our mentorship programmes.

The young people we work with have fled their homes due to war, armed conflict or persecution and travelled thousands of miles to reach safety in the UK. In 2023 alone, there were 5,010 applications from unaccompanied children, arriving to seek protection, often taking perilous journeys. For Hope for the Young to continue to ensure that more young people seeking safety can access the education and one-to-one support they deserve to rebuild their lives in the UK, we need your help.

Why a 4000 Mile Challenge, you ask?

The majority of young people that we work alongside will have travelled thousands of miles from their home, often entirely on their own, to seek safety in the UK. To honour their journeys, we have calculated that, on average, young people on our programmes have travelled 4000 miles, to seek a better life. This includes journeys from Afghanistan (4676), Eritrea (4999 miles), Iran (3410 miles), Syria (2829) and Vietnam (5374 miles).

Throughout the month of September, we’ll be attempting to reach a combined distance of 4000 miles in an effort to raise £10,000 of vital funding towards our work. And we need you to help us achieve our goal!

How can you get involved?

Walk, run, swim, cycle or kayak with us in September, to help us support more young people to access education and mentoring support! Whether that is running 5k per day for the month of September, challenging yourself to an epic cycle, or walking an incredible route across the Welsh mountains, any distance will be so appreciated, and all donations will help us reach more young people through our mentoring and grants and advocacy programmes.

To create your own fundraising page, which has further information on this epic challenge #4000MILESOFHOPE, click here.

1. Sign up to the event by clicking here

2. Choose how many miles to complete and how to do them

You could walk 5km around your local park every day, team up with friends to cycle from London to Brighton, or even take on a half-marathon.

3. Start clocking your miles and gathering sponsors!

Whether you reach 1 mile, 10 miles, or 100 miles, every mile you travel and every penny you raise will go directly towards supporting young refugees to access the education and one-to-one support they need to rebuild their lives.

Save the Date: Join us at our Annual Fundraising Walk on 28th September 2024!

As part of our 4000 Mile Challenge, and to celebrate the end of the September Annual Challenge, we’ll be getting together on Saturday 28th September to walk a 10-mile route through the beautiful Hackney Marshes and Walthamstow Wetlands in North London.

This is always a lovely, positive day out and a great opportunity to meet volunteers and young people, as well as the Hope for the Young team and supporters.

Please spread the word and bring along family and friends – the more the merrier!

Do I have to raise money to attend the Annual Sponsored Walk?

You can attend this walk without organising your own challenge event, we would love to see as many faces there as possible. We do have a small ask that our supporters who walk with us try to raise £50, however anything you can raise will contribute massively to our 4000 Mile Challenge. Please click here to sign up, and you’ll be able to create your very own fundraising page. If you would like any further information, or have any questions, please email hannah@hopefortheyoung.org.uk