YOUR GUIDE TO GETTING STARTED

YOUR GUIDE TO GETTING STARTED

Incredibly tough challenge that I am extremely proud to have come through and to have helped such wonderful causes. Kieron, 10km in 24 hours? Easy!! Where to begin You re about to take on something incredible for Oxfam and The Gurkha Welfare Trust- we re delighted to have you on board. You re part of an amazing group of people, all training, fundraising and preparing for the challenge of a lifetime. Thank you for taking on Trailwalker. We think you re amazing. 1.START EARLY Year after year teams say that the earlier they got started, the more confident they felt on event weekend. Starting your training and fundraising early will enable you to pace yourself, meaning you ll have plenty of time to prepare, and smash your fundraising target. 2. MAKE A PLAN Taking on Trailwalker is all about working as a team. The first step is to make a training and fundraising plan with your team. Diaries fill up quickly, so the sooner you can get organised the better. 3. FUND ONLINE Online fundraising pages are the simplest and easiest way to fundraise. Follow the step by step instructions on page 3 to set up your JustGiving page. Your page will enable friends and family to sponsor you straight away, so you won t have to chase them after the event. 4. TELL EVERYONE Not everyone will know or understand the scale of the challenge you re taking on. Tell them about it and don t leave out the tough parts your hard work will help to inspire them to sponsor you. 5. BE CREATIVE You can raise big money in a small amount of time by putting on events. The ideas are endless: auctions, raffles, Gurkha curry nights, cake sales, pub quizzes, dress down days, film marathons, sports tournaments and sweepstakes. Join Trailwalker online for the latest event updates: Search Trailwalker UK @TrailwalkerUK 1

Lifting lives for good By taking on Trailwalker, you re raising money for Oxfam and The Gurkha Welfare Trust, helping to give people the lift they need to improve their lives. Oxfam works in communities around the world to give people in poverty the lift they need, whether that s emergency sanitation or essential training to improve their crops. Husna lives in the village of Khawand Bux La Shari, Pakistan. In the flood of 2010 she lost her home and livelihood. The water destroyed everything, including the fields she worked in. Without an income or source of food, Husna and her family were destitute. Oxfam provided toilets and water pumps to clear the water in Husna s village. A Cash for Work scheme was established, where villagers were paid to help clear the rubble and irrigation channels in the fields. The scheme gave Husna a much needed income, so she could buy food and medicine for her and her children. We collected whatever remained of our houses and we put it all in one place and together we cleaned the village. We are thankful as they helped us a lot. It was difficult for me before the flood and now it is more difficult for me as there is no farming or harvesting. We cannot cultivate on the land here this year. When we got back to our village we saw only water. We found nothing. In the aftermath of the flood Oxfam assisted in 92 villages, helping 6,200 families like Husna s get back on their feet. The Gurkha Welfare Trust provides financial, medical and community aid to alleviate hardship and distress among Gurkha ex-servicemen and their communities in Nepal. WW2 veteran Kehar Sing Thapa lives with his daughter and her family of 6 in Tanahun, central Nepal. Now an old man of 95, he fought in Syria and Libya. It was in Libya that he was captured by enemy forces and taken to a POW camp in Italy. Kehar recalls how they were deprived of food and water, and what a blessing it was when the British organised air drops to provide them with vital supplies. Kehar is once again relying on British support to survive, this time in his own country. Now blind and with only limited hearing, he and his family rely on the Welfare Pension sent over from the UK to provide them with enough money to feed themselves. Just 50 a month can pay for one month s Welfare Pension for an elderly or infirm Gurkha ex-serviceman. The Trust is also helping with a new scheme where family carers of our pensioners are paid a monthly Home Carers Allowance of NPR 2,000 to care for their elderly relative. Kehar retains his wonderful sense of humour and he smiles to hear of the British public s gratitude for his loyal service. It s to care for brave and old veterans like Kehar that The Gurkha Welfare Trust was established. 2

Setting up your online fundraising page * How fundraising is split - Your fundraising is first sent to Oxfam so that it can be processed. Then it s all added together and split between Oxfam and The Gurkha Welfare Trust. Online giving pages are the easiest and best way to fundraise. Friends and family can sponsor you online, and their donations will come straight to Oxfam * and be added to your team s fundraising total. It s simple to set up, and means you won t have to chase people for their sponsorship after the event. MAKE YOUR PAGE Visit www.justgiving.com/oxfam, select Organised event and then choose Trailwalker from the list. You ll need to fill in some details, and then your page will be up and running. Make sure you set up your JustGiving page under your own name (rather than your team or company name) so your donations can be put towards your individual fundraising record. PROMOTE YOUR PAGE Use word of mouth, posters, social media, and emails to get the word out there. Add your JustGiving link to your email signature too the more you can remind people the better. THANK PEOPLE Make sure you thank friends and family that sponsor you. If you do it through social media it will show up on other people s news feeds, and remind those that haven t sponsored you yet. SPREAD THE WORD ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER 100km isn t something people do all the time; use posts, photos and video to show the enormous effort you re putting in. It ll keep the challenge at the forefront of people s minds, and will help encourage sponsors to donate generously. PERSONALISE YOUR PAGE Add a photo of your team and write about why you re taking on Trailwalker. Update this regularly so people can see how you re getting along. ADD YOUR FUNDRAISING PLEDGE AS YOUR TARGET Pages with a target raise almost 10% more than those without one. If you re getting close to your original target, raise it so that people are motivated to keep giving. I m trekking 100km for #Trailwalker2014 and raising money for @Oxfamgb and @gwtorg 3

Use events to kick-start your fundraising Events are the best way to get your fundraising started. They ll help you make strides towards your target and are fun to put on. You can hold lots of smaller events or one big one, but whatever you decide it s best to get started early. Here are some of our tried and tested ideas: 50-75 50-75 100-150 100-150 BAKE SALE It s a classic way to fundraise and easy to organise, especially if you ask friends and family to help with the baking. Cake sales are a great fundraiser for the office. SWEEPSTAKE Set up a sweepstake for the FA Cup, Wimbledon, or any other major event. Try to get the winning prize donated by a local business. CAR BOOT SALE Ask for donations of clothes, books and anything you can sell second-hand, then take them to a boot sale. It s a great way for people to support you and will also help clear out your cupboards. RAFFLE No-one can resist a raffle, especially if you source great prizes. Ask local businesses for prizes like cinema tickets, dinners for two, hampers or vouchers. 75-100 50-75 75-100 150-200 NEIGHBOURHOOD CHORES Talk to your neighbours or post a note through their door offering help with any chores they might have. Charge per task or ask for donations. DRESS DOWN DAY Ask everyone in your workplace to donate so they can dress in casual clothes or fancy dress for the day. SPORTS DAY Get active and organise a tournament or sports day with friends or colleagues. You can ask for entry donations and sell food and drink too. GURKHA CURRY & QUIZ NIGHT Get as many teams together as possible and ask for a donation of 5 per person. There are loads of quiz questions and recipes online. Just get a chatty host and get cooking. Get more fundraising tips and ideas at www.oxfam.org.uk/trailwalker/fundraise 4

How other teams did it Some of the best ideas are borrowed from other people. See how some Trailwalker teams fundraised last year: TEAM AUTONOMY S POP-UP CINEMA We wanted to hold a big event, so we decided to host a cinema night. We picked a film we thought would draw a crowd- it happened to be Argo, which was lucky as it had just scooped three Oscars and not many people had seen it! We had an amazing turn out. From ticket and snack sales, we raised 988! All you need to host your own pop-up cinema night is a venue, a borrowed projector and a great film. You ll need to look into film licensing before you put yours on. WALKING ON SUNSHINE S OFFICE BAKE SALE AND RAFFLE We d held a bake sale earlier in the year and raised around 100, so we decided to hold another, but added a raffle to encourage more people to get involved. We asked for donations from local businesses and cafes, which was actually surprisingly easy. We managed to get things like donated cinema tickets and meals for two. To launch the raffle we had a bake sale and sent an email to everyone at work. We raised over 500! Holding a raffle is an easy idea on its own, or at another event. Make sure you check out raffle legislation before you put yours on. A HIKEWAY TO HELL S PUB QUIZ We knew the manager of a local pub, so we decided to have a quiz night there. Between the 4 of us it was easy enough to think up a few rounds of questions, some walkingthemed. I made posters and we put them up at work and in the local area and we set up a Facebook event. The more promotion you can do beforehand, the better. We d definitely recommend selling food if you can too: we put on a small bbq in the garden. With the food and quiz, we made nearly 300. If you re thinking about holding a pub quiz, look online for questions and get in touch with local pubs that might give you the venue for free. 5 See how other teams fundraised at www.oxfam.org.uk/trailwalker/fundraise

Top facts to tell sponsors When asking for sponsorship it s always helpful to have facts and figures at your finger tips. Your sponsors will want to know what their donations are going towards and the difference their money can make. OXFAM Following the earthquake in Haiti, Oxfam delivered more than 300 million litres of clean water to people every month Oxfam have already reached 20,000 Syrian refugees, providing emergency toilets and sanitation in refugee camps. In 2012/13, Oxfam improved sanitation facilities for 2.6 million people globally, greatly reducing the spread of disease Thanks to an Oxfam initiative, 166,000 women in Pakistan were able to vote for the first time in 2013 Find out more about Oxfam s work: www.oxfam.org.uk/what-we-do 24 can support a farming family by setting them up with the equipment needed to plant an allotment, improving their diet and providing a secure income. 77.42 can drill a well to provide clean, safe water to communities in rural Bangladesh. 140 can protect 10 families health by providing the hygiene kit that will prevent disease in an emergency situation. THE GURKHA WELFARE TRUST The Gurkha Welfare Trust pays a welfare pension to 7,359 needy Gurkha ex-servicemen and their widows living in Nepal. Last year The Gurkha Welfare Trust s medical staff performed 138,686 treatments in Gurkha communities in Nepal. The Gurkha Welfare Trust built one new school and a further 78 schools were extended, refurbished or repaired last year, benefitting over 20,000 school children. The Gurkha Welfare Trust gave 52 villages and 12,000 people clean water and sanitation for the first time in 2012/13. 16 can pay for a cataract operation for a Gurkha in Nepal and restore the gift of sight. 50 could pay for one month s Welfare Pension for an elderly or infirm Gurkha ex-serviceman. 89 is the cost of one week s care for a resident in The Gurkha Welfare Trust Residential Homes in Kaski and Dharan, Nepal. Find out more about The Gurkha Welfare Trust: www.gwt.org.uk I m trekking 100km to raise money for @Oxfamgb and @gwtorg. Just 14 can protect a family s health in an emergency. Sponsor my trek. 6

7 Unbelievable. Not only did we raise around 3000 for such an amazing cause, we had an amazing time - it was an experience none of us will forget. Melissa-Jayne Cliff, QUADS4WADS

Training: Where to begin If you ve never taken on something like Trailwalker before, it will take time to build up to the distance you ll be taking on. Even if you re an experienced walker, you ll need extra preparation for trekking non-stop for up to 30 hours. TRAIN AS A TEAM Team training walks are important for keeping you motivated, figuring out your team s pace and getting to know the people you re trekking with. As you train make sure you vary the person at the front and back of the group to keep everyone s morale high. Make your training walks enjoyable by stopping for a pub lunch, or going for drinks afterwards. INCREASE DISTANCES STEADILY Trailwalker is a marathon, not a sprint. In fact, it s 2.5 marathons. So start training gently, taking into account your team s experience and fitness levels. Build up to longer distances slowly, and aim to increase your physical activity by no more than 10% each week (otherwise you ll risk injury). Schedule in longer training walks at the weekend, and as the challenge gets nearer cover long distances over multiple days it ll help replicate conditions on the event. BUILD TRAINING INTO YOUR ROUTINE Training walks are essential, but you ll also need to increase your general fitness. Cycling to work, joining a gym class or swimming are good ways to build your fitness and muscle strength. Try to add in as much shorter-distance walking as possible. Get off the tube a few stops early or walk rather than getting the bus. Every extra bit you can do will help. TRAIN ON THE COURSE Training on the route itself will help you get to grips with what to expect on event weekend. It s particularly useful to walk the night sections, so you know the route first-hand. It ll help you get through the tough sections, both physically and mentally. Route maps and directions are available online, and this year s guide will be sent to you in early 2014. NIGHT WALKING Plan at least two training night walks for your team. Walking at night can slow your pace, throw off your orientation and confuse your body. If you ve practiced beforehand you ll know what to expect and be able to take it in your stride. Make sure you stay together as a team and choose a safe route. City loops are a good option. Think about your food and liquid intake too - it s easy to forget to eat and drink at night. BLISTERS AND CHAFING Some trekkers experience blister issues. Others don t. Training will help you work out your weak points and how to manage these. Developing techniques for blister care and chafing prevention can make the difference between finishing the challenge or not. Take foot care seriously and act as soon as you feel a hot spot or discomfort. ACHES AND PAINS If you pick up an injury or experience ongoing soreness or pain, it s important to get professional advice. Ignoring a problem or trying to push through it could set you back for weeks. If you have any injury concerns, please seek medical advice. TRAINING PLANS Getting into a routine is the best way to keep motivated. Plan your training in a way that suits you, your team and your everyday life. You will be provided with a full training guide in early 2014, giving you plenty of time to get ready for Trailwalker. PREPARATION SESSIONS We re holding preparation sessions in April and May that cover training, kit and fundraising tips, plus event and course information. We d definitely recommend getting your team to a session if you can. The dates will be announced online and we ll let you know by email when they re coming up. FACEBOOK AND TWITTER Teams are always sharing advice about their training, blister care and fundraising on the Trailwalker Facebook and Twitter groups. You ll also find out all the latest information about the challenges. Search Trailwalker UK Follow us @TrailwalkerUK 8

Getting your kit right There s a lot of information about kit around and it can be confusing. Remember, you don t need the perfect kit when you first start training. Nearer the event we ll provide a full list of required kit, but here are some key things to consider at this stage. BOOTS OR SHOES The one thing you need to get right from the start is finding comfortable walking boots or shoes. You ll be covering a lot of miles, so they need to fit properly. Visit a reliable outdoors store for a full fitting and personal advice. You need a pair that fit your feet and are suitable for the terrain. Trailwalkers often use a combination of shoes and boots across the course; this allows flexibility based on the conditions and how your feet are holding up. If you re suffering from blisters, changing your footwear can really help. SOCKS After your boots, these can make the biggest difference to your comfort. Good quality socks pull moisture away from your feet and prevent chafing and blistering. We d recommend investing in good socks and changing these multiple times on long walks, especially if it s wet. WET WEATHER It s always best to be prepared. Waterproofs are a key part of your kit and you ll need these for training and the event itself. 9 Swap tips and advice with fellow walkers: Search Trailwalker UK @TrailwalkerUK MAP Your team s Map & Event guides will be sent out to your team leader in early 2014. This guide contains detailed maps and course instructions, as well as key event weekend information. Last year s guide is available online if you want to get a head start and find out more about the course. You ll also need at least one copy of the local OS maps per team. This can be ordered online and will be available in most good outdoor shops (Ordinance Survey Landranger maps 197 and 198). WALKING POLES They re not on your essential kit list, but we d highly recommend trying these out. With the proper technique, walking poles can allow you to take longer strides and trek for a longer period of time. They can also help you balance, particularly on difficult terrain or steep descents. But with walking poles, you ll either love them or hate them so give them a go.

A few other things to think about SUPPORT CREW Having your support crew in place early can make all the difference. You should already have a support crew lead, but now s the time to recruit the rest of the members (ideally 4 people). The more your support crew can be involved in your training and planning the better, so that they understand what you need from them on event weekend. We ll provide a guide for your support crew, including maps, directions and tips. EVENT WEEKEND Your team will need to arrive at the starting location at Queen Elizabeth Country Park on Friday 25th July for event registration (this will take place between 4-10pm). Please factor this into your plans. Free camping will be available at the site for teams and support crews. Accommodation and transport You probably won t want to drive to the event, and walkers shouldn t drive themselves back, as you ll be sleep deprived as well as physically exhausted. Your support crew may also have been supporting you through the night. It s important any drivers are fully rested before taking the wheel so decide beforehand how you re getting there and back. Make sure you ve thought about the recovery time you ll want after the event, so you re fully rested before you travel home. We recommend you book any accommodation as early as possible. DON T FORGET GIFT AID If your sponsors Gift Aid their donations The Gurkha Welfare Trust will receive an extra 1 for every 4 given. Gift Aid isn t included in your pledge or your team total but will help Oxfam make an even bigger difference to lives around the world. MATCHED GIVING You could double your fundraising if your workplace offers a Matched Giving scheme. Some companies will match fundraising pound for pound; others will match up to a certain level. Ask your HR team if your company or workplace offer a scheme. There s normally a simple application process involved. Match Giving could double the impact of your fundraising efforts and make it easier for you to reach your pledge so it s well worth checking. MORE ADVICE AND INFORMATION Trailwalker Facebook and Twitter groups are great places to talk to us and other trekkers, share kit tips, training advice and fundraising plans. You can also call or email the Trailwalker Support Team if you have any questions. Search Trailwalker UK Follow us @TrailwalkerUK Call us: 0300 200 1244 Email us: events@oxfam.org.uk 10

Paying in your fundraising USE YOUR JUSTGIVING PAGE Bank any cash you may have, and make a donation on your JustGiving page. The funds will comes straight to Oxfam and be added to your total. CALL US Call 0300 200 1244 to submit sponsorship over the phone. We ll need to know your full name, team name, address and that it s for Trailwalker 2014 so we can add it to your team total. SEND A CHEQUE All cheques need to be payable to Oxfam and addressed to: Trailwalker Support Team, Oxfam House, John Smith Drive, Oxford, OX4 2JY. Please include your full name, team name, address and Trailwalker 2014 so we can add it to your team total. Make sure you also include your sponsorship forms, so we can claim GiftAid on your donations. Good luck! Oxfam is a registered charity in England and Wales (no 202918) and Scotland (SC039042). Oxfam GB is a member of Oxfam International. The Gurkha Welfare Trust Registered charity No. 1103669. Trailwalker UK is a trademark of the Queen s Gurkha Signals. Photos: RB Create, Crispin Hughes, Shaun Flannery, Peter Duncan, Timothy Allen/Oxfam.