Coventry man raises £26,000 for classrooms in Zambia

Canon Gavin Kibble MBE completed a 13-day trek from coast to coast

Author: Laurence GriffinPublished 12th Jun 2024

A Coventry charity worker has completed a 200-mile walk across England to raise over £26,000 to build classrooms for orphans in Zambia.

Canon Gavin Kibble MBE is Projects Director of Feed the Hungry, and is the founder of Coventry Foodbank.

Gavin said: "We have a feeding program for kids in a school which is specifically for kids orphaned by the AIDS pandemic which hit Zambia really hard.

"They wrote and said they number of kids in the school has reached 400, but they only have 200 spaces.

"The opportunity will be life-changing for them and their community as well as they'll be staying in school which will help the economy."

The 200-mile route between St Bees Head in Lancashire and Robin Hood's Bay in Yorkshire would be a challenge to most people, but was an even bigger achievement for 60-year-old Gavin, who had a heart attack two years ago.

He said: "There's a celebration in not being life-limited to the issues I had before because I had angina so walking 200 feet was difficult before, let alone 200 miles."

Despite raising over £26,000 pounds, Gavin is still looking to raise more money to be able to kit out the school with an IT facility - something he says will require around £4,000 more, aided by a partner matching each donation made.

For more details and to make donations, you can visit Feed the Hungry's website.

Hear all the latest news from across the UK on the hour, every hour, on Greatest Hits Radio on DAB, smartspeaker, at greatesthitsradio.co.uk, and on the Rayo app.