We are committed to support a worthy cause in the course of this event and have chosen the International charity 'Wings of Hope' as our partner. Wings of Hope is an organisation that provides free education to poor and orphaned children in developing countries.
We believe a solid education is the best way out of poverty and the education we can provide will help these children break the cycle of dependency, and it time become providers for their communities.
In India: The Wings of Hope supports a school in Nemilicherry in Chennai, southern India. The school offers a quality education to around 360 children, from kindergarten to Class 10.
There are 12 classes, with an average size of 30 children per class. The school’s staff of 17 dedicated teachers instructs in Languages (English, Tamil, Hindi), Mathematics, Science, and Social Sciences.
Much emphasis is placed on value-based education, under the motto ‘The End of Education Is Character’.
In Malawi: The Wings of Hope funds the 'House of Hope', which offers support to almost 600 children and young adults from the ages of 3 to 20 who have been orphaned because their parents have died of AIDS.
The House of Hope provides a nursery school, after school care and a youth programme to raise HIV/AIDS awareness. Additionally, The Wings of Hope funds the School Support Programme, which covers the entire cost of the education of students between 11 and 22 years of age. This will allow them to proceed to vocational training and higher education.
How can we help?
The organising committee felt that we wanted to do more than just run a paragliding competition.
The focus of the Womens Paragliding Open is to open a new level of opportunity to female pilots some of whom may feel or have felt intimidated by the male / female imbalance in traditional paragliding competition and offer a truely supportive but competitive environment for women to compete amongst themselves.
We want the pilots to enjoy the event and learn from it, and who knows, in two or three years maybe one of the girls competing for the first time will give the guys stiff competition at World level.
In keeping with this spirit of learning and opportunity we aim to raise money for The Wings of Hope by asking pilots to raise sponsorship based on the number of kilomteres they fly during the Womens Paragliding Open.
Its an incentive to fly far both on a personal level and to help children who are living without the opportunity most of us take for granted.
More information and sponsorship forms will be available soon.