Hi, I'm Kate, and as many of you know earlier this year I got the crazy notion to celebrate turning 50 by taking on an adventure. Something bucket-list worthy, that would challenge and push me and, curiously, try to find out what it is I'm capable of. In one week I will start my 5 day, 220km ultra marathon attempt through the Wadi Rum desert, one of the most stunning and ancient sites in the world. After months of what sometimes felt like relentless training, I will join up with 100 other strangers, self-supported, to sleep under the stars at night and bare the blistering sun and sand by day.

It does not pass me by that this is an enormous privilege. That less than 300km away, there are close to a million people living in a war zone, facing persecution, displacement and genocide. Gaza is essentially an open-air prison and its people cannot take an adventure on a whim, many will not ever reach 50, they can't fly in and out for the fun of it, and while I count and sort my gels, electrolytes and dehydrated meals, hundreds of thousands of people; women, children, men, cannot even get basic food, water and nutrition. It is wrong but I am not entirely powerless to do something about it.

So I am running for Gaza Soup Kitchen. Gaza Soup Kitchen provides hot meals, clean water and direct assistance to Palestinians in Gaza facing deliberate starvation. It is a lifeline offering hot meals to thousands of fatigued and malnourished people every day, but it is struggling. The price of many items is getting more expensive, and ingredients are increasingly scarce. But the Gaza Soup Kitchen continues to operate, making do with what it can. So I will do what I can. Please consider supporting me (for as little as one euro for each day I run), and in doing so, support Gazans.

Gaza Soup Kitchen is a charitable, tax-exempt organisation registered in the US. To make fundraising easier because it is US-based I will first collect the donations then transfer to Gaza Soup Kitchen in one go.

Gaza Soup Kitchen