Latest / Let Them Fly - Heather Harries Ed Hub / Heather & Sean Burgess: Finding teenage “grit” in the hills of Mt Meru

Transcript

Heather & Sean Burgess: Finding teenage “grit” in the hills of Mt Meru · Let Them Fly - Heather Harries Ed Hub

• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Today we're really excited to have Sean with us, and he he basically sums up everything I love about working with children.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's about giving them adventure, pushing them beyond their boundaries and taking them out of their comfort zone.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: And the more we can do that as parents, the more chance we have of our children just doing so well and exceeding as they grow up and get older.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: So welcome Sean.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for joining us.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much for having me.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh it's a pleasure to be here.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um so tell me, tell me about what you're going to do.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: What is the adventure this this summer?
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, fantastic.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: So this is uh first for some expeditions.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: We're very, very experienced on going on big mountains with adults and adult groups and even younger children with their parents.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: But this is the first time we're gonna take a group of teens, 15, 16, and 17-year-olds, over to Tanzania.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna have eight days of an amazing adventure.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna climb a mountain with them, we're gonna go on a safari, and really importantly, we're gonna do a charity visit with Bouncing Deluxe Civilizer.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: So a bit of everything for them, get them out of the Dubai bubble, give them an amazing adventure in this incredible country.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: So, this is for children that have finished GCSEs, not quite started A levels, need an adventure.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: They need something to really get their teeth into.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely, you know, and as we spoke to before, isn't it?
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's like getting them away from the parents, getting them away from the Dubai bubble.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's in the summer, so they want to get away from here anyway, and it's just getting them to meet uh kids from other schools as well.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I know a lot of the school trips that they do are with their kids that they spend years within classrooms, whereas this is getting kids from different schools, getting them out there, um, just before they start sort of the high pressure of their final year of A levels.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's those two really important years, and also it's the years before they're going off to university and applying for university, and it's giving them a taste of kind of the outside world of their own.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: A taste of freedom.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, exactly.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: I I mean I think it's really important.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: I for me, and I think once children learn to stand in their own two feet, they taste that kind of gen that adventure that there's more outside the world.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: We see them doing so much better because they they have a purpose and they find their resilience.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: And and somebody said to me, Why is it so important to be taking teens up there?
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, because I see what it's like to take somebody who is 40 or 50 or 60 to the top of a kiloman jelly.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: I see the impact that it has on their love for the next few decades.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: Imagine if we can do that for a child, uh teen who is 15 or 16, who's going through those kind of formative years, who's just about to go to university, go into their 20s, go out to the the big, wide, scary world, and we can take them up in the medicine to show them that they've got that physical and mental endurance and perseverance and grit.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: If they can prove themselves on a mouth, they'll do so much better as they go into those difficult immune vests and is starting their first job.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, the impact that we can make on someone who's 15 or 16 is so much greater than 40 or 50.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: You used that was my favourite word as grit, and the research has gone into into that word grit that says that the children who have got grit do better academically, physically, uh professionally, just in life because they found that grit.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's one thing we don't teach in schools, and it's people like you that just put that into their lives in such a great way.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: So tell me, how fit do these children have to be?
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's probably the burning question.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's a long, it's a long trek.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's so interesting.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: So it is uh Maroon is a beautiful mountain, it's it's known as Kilovanjaro's, and the rather is the fifth highest mountain in Africa, but it's not as high as you go up to about four and a half thousand meters with chin is uh sort of high enough that they're gonna feel the effects of attitude, but not so high that they're sort of high risk, which sometimes I'm kidding.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um but they've the incredibly frustrating but funny thing about this is that kids and I don't, especially teens, are unbelievable literature on an acting.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: They us adults will be limping up there, we'll be breathing every, and the kids will be walking past us, chatting away, singing all the way to the summit and back down.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't worry physically about the kids or about the teens when they're on the mountain.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: I think they're all absolutely smash it because they're very naturally, especially out here with so much sports and albums about sort of co-curricular activities, they're all active anyway.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it what I'm more concerned about, the thing that we've got to talk to them about is the mental side of getting to the top of the mountain because they're gonna be trekking for four days, they're gonna be in a strange arch sleeping in huts, not tends, uh luckily the toilet situation isn't as glamorous as it is here.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: So mentally, I think they're gonna it's gonna be a completely new environment.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: And what I always say to people is on these mountains, try and rely on as much past experiences.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: If you haven't been through tough things, if you've never done any big enjoyment events, then use that experience.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: For kids, they don't tend to have that.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: So this is gonna be the first time that they're in a sort of unusual foreign environment.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be three, four, five, six, and on the sunlight.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: Then those are the times where they're gonna build that grit because it's those times when they go, I want to go down, we go, you're not going down.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever you've got inside, you do bring it up to the surface, get yourselves up to that summit.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: Because when you stand there and you see the sunrise on the top of Mount Maru, you can see Kilanjari 60 kilometers away, and you can look over the plains of Tannis and here, that's memory they'll take into them for the rest of their life.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: And the harder it is mentally, the more that they're gonna get out of that experience.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I totally agree.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: I when I was 16, I was very lucky enough to and go on a tour through the rocking mountains cycling, and it was absolutely amazing.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: But I have to say it changed me because I got I think on day two, I'd have we we'd been cycling uphill for two days later.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I'd got to the point where I said, I wanted to stop.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: And the counsellors that were with me at the time said, You're not stopping, that's not the notion, we're going.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: And do you know it's like I I I I in my memory it was probably ten days uphill than ten days uphill, but it feels like it but changed me as a person and it suddenly made me realise that nothing was impossible.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that mindset is the one that could carry kids so much further.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: I know, and I I completely agree.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I was lucky enough to do a few things in my teens, um, as you do in the UK, and and if you dug go on some of these ventures, and then I was running the English channel as part of a relay team.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's what's the English channel.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: Let's only explain explain how, why?
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: It was uh part of a charity called Southwest Wings, which was supporting underprivileged kids in in North Devon.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I was uh trainer at 18 years old in the summer holidays before going off to university.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember um just getting involved in it, and they said we've got two of the kids who are gonna do it with us.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: They were both arm was fifteen and one was sixteen, and then we had the chairwoman who was in uh late 70s, and then they needed some people in the middle who were just gonna sort of fill the gaps and that's I mean one it worries me because it's cold.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: I have to say, I've got cold seal, I don't I don't do that anyway.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: But it's quite a busy shipping lane.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: So how complicated is that to swim that?
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it was it was more doors.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: I I we trusted the pilot of the boat.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: But for most of the uh most of the sort of five, six hours.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: So we started at four in the morning and because it was a reading, do an hour on, and then you've got five hours off whilst you know the five people go through it.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: So um we had uh the pilot of the boat was was navigating us over to France, and we did the first few hours in the dark.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: I jumped in at I think 4 a.m.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: to strung my first thing in the dark, which is yes, yeah, scary.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: And it's very, very cold because uh if you're a solo, you can lather yourself up in in gooseback and duck fat because you're not able to get on and off the boat.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: From a safety perspective, it's a T, you can't do that.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: So you're jumping in as speedos and you're off.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: So I I jumped back on the boat, and at that point the sun's rising, but it's completely for me.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like I can't see from here to the window, and all you can hear is the big horns of the container ships, and you don't know if they're 10 meters away or 200 meters away.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's very scary.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: But we got about 16, 17 hours in, and by chance, I was the one who got to swim the last leg.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I was the one that came in, swam into France, and it was quite funny because I swam in, and then all these people obviously see it happening because they can see people swimmers heads and people go on one away, they've just swam their channel, they can't see the rest of the teeth.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: It looks like I started my swung.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, that's yeah, everyone's cheering, and it's an amazing experience.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: And he re raised some£20,000 for the charity, which was great.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: But that kind of built mine enough of not just doing these challenges but also supporting others.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and when I first climbed Kilimanjaro over seven years ago, I took more out of taking um my friend Mark to the to the summit.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: Because on summit nights I knew that I was quite comfortable in that environment, it was more about getting in there, and it was about getting myself there.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where I started some exhibitions as well, because that love of taking people up to these mountains.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I always say to people, like, you know, I used to sit in a corporate, uh, I used to sit in the office and was absolutely miserable in my life.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: And even when it's 3, 4, 5 a.m.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: on the on the summit nights, it's freezing and everyone's struggling, I'd still rather be in that environment than I would back in an office.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: But I also get to be a part of people's lives.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's the same for the teens as well.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: When they get to the top of Man Maru and they have this just realization about what they've done, I get to be a part of that part of their life, which is really, really special.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I get to do that highs of science evil.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: So there's absolutely amazing job.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: So tell me more about um Summer's Expeditions.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: You're you've got a partner, yes, Carmade.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: So Caroline Leon, absolutely incredible person.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: So if anyone wants at the Karachi, um, fell off a climbing wall about five years ago, I want to say now.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: So fell uh 10 metres off, dropped onto her leg, shut off her lower body, almost bled out.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: People said she wasn't gonna walk again, and she slowly walked, they said you weren't gonna run again.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: And within two years, with the help of uh a chap named Keith of ETC, he managed to get her climbing mountains and she tried to set the record for climbing to summiting every mountain in the Middle East, and she almost did it.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think it was Syria and Yemen that she couldn't do it, but she'd never done it.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: She's just broken the record for the fastest female summitting about the volcanic summits, the same volcanic sunnets.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: Amazing.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: So going from literally, and she's super bionic, she has like an artificial vertebrae, you know, her bones split her stin, she has uh my feet are all vulnerable, right?
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: She's just incredible what she's able to do.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: And now she's finding those mountains, and she's literally now just summited uh uh Loboche, I think she's in or Island B with a 14-year-old with Sophie who's doing the Sunday summit to get another one of our sort of teams who's incredible.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, it's uh it's inspirational working with her.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, she does those kind of big, big mountains, and I love all the other adventures as well.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: So um, we've got a team going to Uganda in the summer, and we do uh obviously Kimanjaro, we've got uh Morocco next year, Kenya next year.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, we just sort of built it out as it's kind of the duana for it.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: Kelly, uh Kimanjaro and RR bread and butter, there we're doing Kilimanjaro 15 trips a yeah in the men's.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: Amazing.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: I I can't say I don't put my name down behind.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's not quite my I I love being at the top, but I'm never not sure about the route going up.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: So, in terms of the the teen trips, yes, a teen trip, which obviously where my parents are interested, um how many miles a day or kilometers a day we can walk?
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, so it's uh I always do by altitude, so it's very hard on a mountain because you could have like some at night on Kiddie or even summer nights on Maru, it's five kilometres, but it'll take you eight hours.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: So what I always like to do is in is in time and height.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: So we do about a thousand meters of ascent every new day.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: So in the first thing two, three days, so you go from about 1,500 at the gate, you then walk on the first day for about three, four hours.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's only 10 kilometers, but it's an incredible first day.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: On the bigger mountains, you go too high too quickly.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: So on Kilomanjarum, you just go to it, it becomes volcanic, you lose a lot of the nature that's in Tantania on Maru, because you stay low, it's actually walking through the Russian National Park.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: So every time I've done Maru, I've definitely seen giraffes, buffalo, uh, warthogs, baboons, cologus monkeys.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the other day, uh the other time we were on it, we were walking down one of the trails in the rainforest, and there was uh a juvenile male uh giraffe just getting a trailer, and the ray trigger was with us.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: It was like he goes, I've been doing this for 30 years, I've never seen that before.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: So every trip we do is something special, and you you know the first day is just full of wildlife and beauty and rainforest, and especially come from here.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's just green must be just overwhelming.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, it really is.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then we stay at Saddle Hut, uh, stay at Marra Kambah for the first night.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: The next day we go from uh 2,500 metres up to 3,500 meters, which is the point where you're starting to feel a little bit out of breath, but again, teams do way better than uh I say Soul East, but I think it is uh sort of I say, I mean double their age, I'll be the one that's puffing and pants and they'll be the one that's chattering away and singing, and yeah.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um so at this point we go above the clouds, which is incredible.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: We look on the plains of Tatsu Kilimanjaro in the distance.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: We then do a link up to Little Maru, which is sort of an acclimatization height.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: We go up to 3,800 meters from there.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: We have these beautiful views.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: I point them, the crates that I'm gonna be walking up the next day.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then on day three, they go to from a saddle hut, which is 3,500 meters up to 4,500 meters, and that takes anywhere from six to eight hours.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's very slow, it's very steady, it's very safe.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: We have our lead guard in the front, we have our lead guard in the back, in the middle, we have more cellular waters.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's usually a one to one ratio.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: So if anything happens, we have a motor support team there, and we just snake our way up the mountain, and it's only about five kilometres.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: They're walking, not climbing at this point, yeah, scrambling.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, I've got a yeah, with Maru, it is a uh a trek, is it warding?
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: So at no point that we have to tie anyone in, or we're putting hard hurts on.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: There's no point in which you're in that situation where you're sort of on the on the shift, based on cliff and you could fall off.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's just not that sort of mountain, which is nice.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it is it is tough, you know, it is psych types, it's uh quite volcanic, so every step you take is good like walking in the gene sea, and you sort of slip back a bit, you know, mentally that's a struggle when you've already been walking for five, six hours.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: But slowly the sun starts to rise, you get a little bit warmer, and then you can see the summit, and uh you're up there.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's incredible.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: And once they get to the summit, they they see the summit and and take the photos and they stay there or they come back down now?
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they can stand there for about 15 minutes and then the realization of I've now got to get my body back down this now so it can't be like that.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: And and the feeling that going down is easily going up isn't true.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: I no, I know that it's because by that point your legs are a little bit tight, and also just going down because you're going a little bit faster as but again, teams are you know they're bouncy, they're agile.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's again the people with the dodgy knees and the dodgy ankles and the injuries, which again, if you're 1617, you don't have, um you'll be able to find you right around the mount.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: We're getting down to one of the lower counts because even at 4,500 metres, I don't expect anyone to be having sort of real sickness from the altitude, but they'll feel a little bit out of breath, maybe a bit of a headache.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: The quicker we get them down, uh the better they'll feel down to 2,500 metres.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then the next day, the fourth day, we take them out of the park.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: So and we go grind on waterfalls and the these lakes where the giraffes always hang out, and you know, we just sort of give them a nice experience on the warehouse.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: Sounds amazing.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's incredible.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: And my my address is always me at them when you're travelling.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: Lots of carbohydrates, lots of sugar, and and this is what people love about it is I say do knock carry cams in the mountain.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: And the things won't anyway.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: I was saying, bring every single snack that you can think of.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: We'll feed you three big veils a day, you have chocolate bars and reduces and things between meals.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: But otherwise, they can bring all the chocolate bars they want, all the snacks they want, because they're gonna need that fuel to get them up and down the mountain.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: But generally, mornings are porridge, eggs, bread, spreads, that sort of thing.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we cater to pretty much any dietary restriction as well.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then lunches and dinners are always the same.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of a soup and bread to start, and then they have some sort of carbohydrating, bread, haster, potatoes, um, rice, and then vegetarian, non-vegetarian.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's surprising how good the food is considering they're cooking it's all this tiny little gas stove and three and a half thousand metres.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: It really is.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: So they're not going to starve.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: Perfect.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: And then when they come back down, you said you were mentioning earlier about bouncing books or what just like so uh that's kind of day four of the trip of the hike or day five of the actual itinerary.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: We're taking them back, we have a lovely celebration dinner where we're giving them a roof certificate so they can keep that and they can frame it at home and put some photons in as well.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the next thing we did do a safari, so take them into Tarageri National Park, which is known for its elephant herds, but there's also got all of the big five apart from rhinos, so they are likely to see lions, maybe leopards if they're lucky, but definitely giraffes and zebra and uh buffalo.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: And we do two big gay drive, or we give them a picnic in the safari park as well, which is amazing.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then take them back to the hotel that night, and then on the final day in the morning, we take them to see uh Bouncing Books, which is a charity started by Rachel and Luke, who were ex-UA residents, who moved over there with the family, and they started this incredible charity.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's real kind of grassroots, which I love because some of the charities are there.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: You can you feel like the funds are getting lost a little bit, whereas the donation that we're giving to them, which is already built into the PAV game, each child is giving a 500 gym donation, which we're built in.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and part of that is going to be uh uh look at the uh libraries that they set up.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: So their sort of influence or their mission is to set up libraries and sort of holding all libraries in underdeveloped villages and towns in Tanzania.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: So places where they have absolutely no resources, they go there, build this library, fill it from desk up and their children and the adults of the village, and then kind of take out the library books and just and it's also a home for people to come and learn and gather, and it's absolutely incredible.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll go and meet some of the volunteers with Rachel, and then depending on sort of itinerary puts together right like working alongside the volunteers for a couple hours.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: But again, these charities they are working charities.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: We don't want to overburden them with looking after their teens rather than doing their job.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: But if they can meet some of the volunteers, meet some of the good at the children, then that's exactly what we want.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so jam-packed eight days.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: Dates, the dates you've got in.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: So at the moment, it's either the 12th to the 19th of August or the 13th to the 20th.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: So either one kind of things like that right before the GCSE results come out.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: So the GCC results come out the next week.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: So we thought get it in and also get their minds off of the GCSC on the side.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think they are stressing the big time.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: Brilliant.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: And you're flying and who do you find with?
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: What's your so this is the difference between the two days?
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: On the 12th to the 19th in Kenya, and they're about 2,400 DMs at the moment of flight cost, and then it is the next dates with emeralds, but precision there, and they're about three and a half thousand.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: So what we're looking for is get the group confirmed and then just discuss what they're saying about how's everyone feeling price-wise, which you write the emeralds precision flights or the Kenya one.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm using either way.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: We've dropped out of those time and I'll I'll live the team and Tanzania fine either way.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I'll fly with and they're in bag.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: So normally I'll go the day for where I don't really think I'll fly with them or whatever flights it is.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: Excellent.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so total cost and package to do this.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: So at the moment we're doing it um for co at costs.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: So this isn't a profit-driven uh trip for us, it's very much a pilot program for us, and next year we can ramp it up.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: So it's tiered based on the number of kids we have.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: So we need a minimum of four to make it go ahead.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: And at the moment, I think we just about got that.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: If it's four, then it's something like 11,900 derhums, but every extra child that comes on ops that rise by about four or five hundred derims.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: So if we get eight to ten, then I think it's looking around ten thousand dirums.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: Some really, I mean, for for a parent, you're looking at about twelve thousand different, not just something like two thousand pounds.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: What a bargain of an adventure of lifetime as something that they remember for endless.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: I just think that is just the most incredible opportunity.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I think it's not just about it's also not just about them having something they'll remember, it's about changing their lives and changing them to grid resilience, um, being able to work independently, solve problems.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: I just think that that is the most amazing opportunity.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: So, parents, I'm gonna I'm going to put the information for Sean in there.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: In the meantime, we're going to go back and very quickly explore.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: Sean, you mentioned that you came from corporate world.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: Why, how did you Yes, my uh my life for the first 10 years of working is a bit all over the place.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I left school, um, went and worked in the trauma stream with my dad as a runner, did that for three years.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: He retired.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: I thought this is really thick for me.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I went back to university, I did a uh biomedical degree with the idea to go into uh sort of biomedical uh investment funds, all that sort of rubbish, and chasing money for years near which it just was so silly, but it really threw it for that.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: Any other passion focus who that's of default setting is going to work and earn money and focus on that.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I worked uh in as an analyst, financial analyst for a while, and then worked at a trust company for a while, and then eventually I um became the CO of a tech company called it was Embrace St.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: Chow or is now Yom Me, which any parents who work in schools are not tech is everywhere now.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I did that for three years, and the first 18 months were absolutely amazing, the second 18 months were absolutely terrible, and I became very, very uh depressed, let's say.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: I put on 15 kg of uh of not lost to lie, um I was in the worst place in my marriage in my life, my friends like I lost all my friends because working was ridiculous hours and always miserable.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember getting to the point where I would get off, get out of bed and just sit on the end of my bed with my hands hit my head with my hands for 20 minutes, then just think, what on earth am I doing?
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I had no plan at this point.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: But I one day woke up and I gave my resignation and said, I'm I'm done.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to do this anymore.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: I have literally no idea what I'm doing.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then a few days later, my father passed away.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: So for me, there was this massive sort of change in my life.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: There was also uh encouragement that what I'd done was the right thing because he was a film producer.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: I remember going onto a Facebook page for um uh old sort of film industry people, and when somebody had now still uh PA and now some by the way Alfred Virgil's side passed away.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: The comments that he had on his Facebook post, there were hundreds of them, and there was so you know, I I worked with Al when I was in my twenties, what a lovely guy.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: This is what he did for me, what a passionate man.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like he loved the film shoot, love people, and all I've always been proud of him.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: But when I read that, I'm like, that's a life that you're proud of living because you get to the end of it and you look back on all these people, like you did the job that you loved, and you were a great person for doing it.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: And like for me, I was like, I need to find that, I need to find my passion, well, love, and yeah, getting in and doing these adventures that's exactly I love my job.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: I can tell that you're passionate.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I just think I always say expect to say that to children, I say follow what you love because the the world's you will always be better at what you love, and you're in the the world for a very long time to do something you don't love.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a very brave move, but obviously the right and then I'm just gonna move on very quickly because you mentioned that you take parents as well.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: So you do some trips with parents and children.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, absolutely, yeah.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: So we are sort of 80% of our business is uh adolescently true.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's not only, but we tend to.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: Adults who want to do it, and we very much have that market of kind of the 35 to maybe 65.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh people who for a little bit older kids, and they're suddenly thinking, I want to focus on me now, so I wanted to go and do a thing I've never done before, which is fine kidney jar as a nutritional ever state standpoint.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: We do uh parents and younger teen trips.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: So we've I was on that maroon with uh Zoe and her son Stan, who's 14 uh a few months ago, and uh my business partner Caroline's with Sophie, who's 14, and we're buying them for uh dad Sam.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: So we do a lot of those trips as well.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: But this is the first of those kind of teens, teens only trips.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: But that's something that we want to get more and more into because we see the potential.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: So, how many how many mountains do you climb an illea roughly?
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: Oh gosh, so I probably do 10.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: I've all three.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, 10, yeah.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you look so square.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I knew the jar.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: But it's funny, so I come back here and I I film away, so I'm like, Oh, you're back on another mountain.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, if I'm only filming a jarro for uh for a month, I'll lose probably 10k in June.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: Because it just endowed.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: You might be making it sound a bit more a bit more beneficial to climb, but yeah, basically.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: So what are your plans?
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so this year you've got your teens of added um how what else what else is going on?
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm back on Matmaru in um June.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'm taking a gym up there, and then 15 of the gym go is going.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, the next month I've got NCAD MBA program, they're taking us, or I'm taking about Kilmanjaro.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: Then I've got the kids trip in August.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, my business partner's in Uganda in August, she's taking a group there.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: She's also in Dinharmony X month, so no business is we're sort of everywhere at the moment.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: But we we want to regul some new trips.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: We want to do Mount Topco in Morocco, I think that'd be a really fun one, a good teens trip as well for the future.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: Mount Kenya wants to do, and then yeah, we just sort of build it out from what people want.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: Once people become a one trip with us, it is very much that like, well, what's the next one?
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: What's the next one?
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: So we we kind of then decide ourselves where do you want to go and we'll organise it, take you there.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: It comes with a it comes with a little warning that if your child does this with anything to you, you'll be paying them for the similarity if you know that just just as long as I know us.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: When you get to the bigger ones, but at the moment the kids ones fine.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's amazing.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so just just for for our parents, I mean what would you expect to see from a child decline and up to the kid?
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: What what's the difference?
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: Oh god, it's it's like anything that we see with the the Adams as well.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: That sense of you know, I would I I send most people a message afterwards, and I'm like, your watermark for what you can achieve is now so much higher.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: And that belief like I set a couple world records and I've done a lot of the unique challenges and stuff.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: So I know that when I I'm in a tough space in my life, I can look back on what I have done and know that I've got the person of Britain and Druins to be able to push through it.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: So not only will they come back, it's a correct baby, but they're having it's just belief in the back of their head.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: Every time something's hard, it's like, yeah, but I I survived Man Baru.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: When it was all I wanted to do was turn around at 3 a.m., 4 a.m., 5am.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: I was the one that pushed myself and kept going.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: So we're not going to carry them up there.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's still their two legs, they're going to get up there and that.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: Just that belief in themselves, I think, changes.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: And especially for kids now, I think that sort of the real formative years in the 15, 16, 17, where you're having those doubts and the world is a big scaring place.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: And going each understand confidence.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, and also the independence, I think.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when they're about to go off to university in a few years tired, knowing that they go and travel on their own and be independent, I think, is isn't it?
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think one of the things you said there is really true is that when they're 14, 15, they don't know who they are.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I think finding themselves in the person and knowing that they have the stamina to be the person they want to be, I think that's really important as well.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure they'll find it.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm gonna just pop back.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: You just I should have dropped in them, and of course I've got a couple of world records you're not telling us what they are.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so I I set the uh so I did the Seven Emirates Challenge post-COVID where I ran, walked and crawled my way from the Saudi border to Fajera through all the seven emirates.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I um in it was 650 kilometers in six days and 21 hours or something.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I linked my way.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: So the first couple of days were great.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: I ran, then I walked, then I hoggled, then I literally linked myself uh to Fajera and stood on the beach there six days and 21 hours later, with an incredible support team who raised 10,000 dierms for a Ugandan charity called SOP Education.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and then about a year ago I did a row for 52 hours.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: So concept two row at the gym.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: I sat in it for 52 hours and did uh 10 bats by marathon, so about four months.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so and that now it's uh about record as well.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: Not a Guinness one, but uh concept two record.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: You're you're looking at somebody who thinks that running a half marathon is the biggest thing they've ever done and let hold of the hand.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: So you just you just knocked me out of every row and has this conversation like I said.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone's got their own.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: Everest everyone has these big challenges, and it's it's like people who come on our trips.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes they get to the top of Killy, and that is the biggest thing they were ever doing in their lives, and other people get there and think, Well, what's the next big one?
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: Then they go on and do Everest.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: So uh you know, everyone has their own sort of I think Lyme and Kinney is quite a big challenge.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's incredible, I guess.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: Following Rachel one, it's my it's my favourite one.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: I love I would climb Kilimanjaro every week of the year and take people out there.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: It is incredible.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if you listen to Helen Farmer just finished.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: She was telling she born your track with so much.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: She was with uh Capri.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: She actually went to four Caroline company, but she Caroline was her team leader, so great.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: And Helen's coming to Uganda with us in the cellar.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: Amazing, because I was talking to her before and she's going, I don't know.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: I just need and I was so amazed, uh, inspired by you know, because to do that when you've got young kids and incredible, absolutely incredible.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, she is.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: And she was she was great on Summit Light, from what Caroline tells me.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: She was super strong, one of the strongest in the group.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: Can you imagine?
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's amazing.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, she's got that real positive candy attitude, hasn't she?
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you ever so much.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what we need to do is we need to find out how do how do our parents get on hold of you for their website?
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: We do, but we don't have the teen strip up there at the moment because we don't want people to book and then have we want people to contact us first so we can have a uh chat with them and they can ask any questions, and then we're adding people to a WhatsApp group so that they can we're doing sort of uh team meetings there at the moment.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: So they can email me or contact me or WhatsApp me.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm always on WhatsApp, um, and then I can add them into the group and they can ask any questions.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: Run it's kind of our USP, is that we provide this huge amount of support uh because we are based there, people are basically it's easy for us to go and have a coffee and chat and he, your kids, and know more about me.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: So message me or in our chat rooms uh the WhatsApp group.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I'll I'll add that at the bottom of the podcast.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um and what I am I'm gonna say is that you know, 12,000 sounds a lot of money, but actually 12,000 to change your child's life is nothing in the scheme of things.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: And when you think of how much they put into all the other things they do, this is life-changing.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: I I've got a million questions I think I want to ask, but I we're gonna run out of time.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: You might as well ask you to come back, and we definitely want you to come back after the trip to find out more they do with the kids as well.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but that's incredible.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: I know I know at least I know one of the children that's going, and I think she's gonna have the time of her life at Slingsville.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you very much.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: No, thank you so much for having me.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's a pleasure.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's been a pleasure, thank you.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.