Sponsorship Letter

---

Harper House,
Hound Street,
Sherborne,
Dorset.
DT9 3AD



As part of my final year in Sherborne, four of us from Harper House, Sherborne School are walking in July 2008, from St-Jean-Pied-de-Port in France to Leon in Spain along the Santiago de Compostella route in order to raise money for two school charities. The Santiago de Compostella is the old pilgrim’s route, crossing the Pyrenees to Compostella in Western Spain. Our intent is to raise £4000 for two charities that are closely linked to Sherborne School. One is called ‘Reach’ (aimed at bringing reconciliation between the Tutsis and the Hutus in Rwanda after the atrocious genocide of the early 1990s) and the other is ‘Ecuador’ (aimed to help educate the young rural poor of Northern Ecuador).

Due to our school commitments, we will not have enough time to walk the whole route in 2008, so we have decided to walk 500 kilometres this year. We aim to hike around 25 kilometres a day and, by all accounts, we will endure some very tough and arid terrain with little shade at that time of year. However, it will be fascinating and a wonderful worthwhile challenge.

The Sherborne School charity links are chosen by us boys on the Charity Committee (of which I am one). The idea is not only to generate money to help these many worthy causes in the undeveloped world, but also give Sherborne boys a chance to visit these projects during a gap year giving them a valuable and enriching experience.

As a charitable endeavour, we are looking for sponsorship so, if you feel able to sponsor us in this project, we would be most grateful. Please note that all donations will go straight to ‘Reach’ and ‘Equador’. We are paying for all our own trek expenses which has been assisted by acquiring a Sherborne School travel grant worth £1000

So, if this interests you, please could you kindly send me a donation to my school address as above. At the request of the school bursar, cheques need to be made payable to Sherborne School with ‘Santiago de Compostella walk’ written on the back.

You will be able to follow our progress on our blog, www.travelblog.org/bloggers/Harper-Boys/ and you can also ‘subscribe’ to our blog for personal email updates. In the meantime, any help, advice or tips that you can offer would be most gratefully received.

Finally, should you have any further queries please could contact me on my email address: [e-mail]. Thank you so much for reading through this, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Thankyou to all of you who have pleged money so far,

Henry

---