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Mark Hinchliffe·
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Sahara charity ride for African health

Kenn Bannister's adventure charity ride for African health sahara

Former Gold Coast rider Kenn Bannister is riding solo from London to Africa and back over almost 2000km of Sahara Desert to raise money to train African doctors and nurses.

Kenn left last week and is headed through Europe to Africa, covering 7200km and nine countries in four weeks.

He has been planning the ride for two years and has some support from the Royal Army.

Kenn is a member of the King’s College London Alumni and is raising money for the college’s Sierra Leone Partnership in support of their vital work with Sierra Leonean medical schools to train urgently-needed doctors, nurses and surgeons.

“The expedition is a very demanding solo, unsupported and self-funded London to Freetown rally navigation endeavour which, at its core, includes a 16-day Paris-Dakar segment,” he says on his expedition Facebook page.

He started at King’s College in London on February 16 and hopes to reach the King’s Sierra Leone Partnership Connaught Hospital in Freetown, Sierra Leone in mid-March 2018 before returning home.

The most challenging part will be the Sahara Desert.Kenn Bannister's adventure charity ride for African health sahara

His Yamaha Tenere is fitted with a satellite tracker updating every two hours.

Click here to follow his progress on his tracker page.

Fundraising

Kenn’s expedition Facebook page says it costs about £10,000 (about $A17,700) for King’s to send one medical specialist to Sierra Leone for six months.

“This is the critical area that I wish to support,” he says.Kenn Bannister's adventure charity ride for African health sahara

“Achieving the fundraising target (£50,000, $A88,600) will allow King’s Global Heath to send up to five specialists to Freetown in an effort to strengthen the Sierra Leonean medical services following the devastating effects of civil war and Ebola.”

So far he has raised only £730 ($A1290).

You can donate from his expedition Facebook page.Kenn Bannister's adventure charity ride for African health sahara

Soldier Kenn

Kenn left Australia in the 1980s to backpack through the UK and is still there. 

He did four years as an enlisted soldier, attended Sandhurst and became on officer in the tank regiment. 

His father served in Vietnam as a professional soldier on two tours.

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2 Comments

  1. Just a warning about charities. While a tiny few do good work;
    About ninety percent of charitable organisations either screw things up worse than they were before they got involved or they are just money laundering organisations .
    Many well meaning charities wil unwittingly give money to the wrong people especially in Africa, even if food only is donated it will be stolen and sold by the wrong people making them rich while the intended recipients still suffer or are deliberately made to suffer worse in the hope of more charity. Many well meaning charities are run by total incompetents who often do very little good while wasting most of the money.
    Then there are the totally bogus charities that are set up in order to launder drug money or fund terrorism. The terrorist ones will fund fictitious schools and education centres and book lending centres any place that lots of vulnerable youths can be gathered and radicalised.
    The money launderers will occasionally actually give money to the supposed charity recipients but often only as little as a tenth of a percent of the total funds they have received with most of the funds going to lawyers and consultants and expenses.
    Don’t waste your time giving money to street collectors or those booths setup in shopping centres you see a lot of these days they are not vullunteers they are paid on comission with over ninety percent of the money you give going to pay the collection company who then give a pittance to the stated charity but often look for ways to keep even that.
    If they say over ninety percent of your donations will go to the charity it is mostly a lie of omission, you have to make a very large donation and sign a contract to keep paying that amount for your money to actually go to the charity.

    1. Sad but true. ‘Charities’ are proliferating and have little effect other than make the directors rich.

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