Childreach International India is excited to announce the departure of its first ever all Indian Challenge Event team to Everest Base Camp. The volunteers, a group of highly motivated students and corporate professionals from Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore, will depart on December 18^th for an expedition that will take them on trails up Nepal’s mountains and through dense forests, all the way up to Everest Base Camp (5,360 m). Everest summiteer Sushmita Maskey and Ang Babu Lama, South Asian Games gold medallist from Nepal, will flag off the team on their 12-day trek, starting in Kathmandu.

The trip aims to raise awareness about India’s Right to Education (RTE) Act (2009) and to raise funds for Childreach International projects in India. Earlier this year, ‘India on 2 Wheels’ Challenge Event volunteers from the UK completed a grueling bicycle challenge across India in support of India’s Right to Education Act,  with the trip culminating in them meeting the minister of Human Resources Development, Kapil Sibal [see photograph, right]. Congratulating the team on their achievement, Sibal said charities must help implement and raise awareness of this important legislation. “The Right to Education has been made a law, now it needs to be implemented through such efforts of young people and other stakeholders," he said.

The Everest Base Camp Challenge Event is just one of many such events that Childreach International India has planned. Coming up in summer 2011 is a motorbike challenge from Delhi to Leh/Ladakh and a bicycle ride across India is likely to be held in June.