Our aim is to inspire you and your friends as you read about our work and raise funds at the same time. We’re a relatively small charity with just 6 staff in the UK office, and we don’t spend much money on marketing campaigns. We’ve always found ‘word of mouth’ is our best marketing strategy; when our wonderful supporters tell their colleagues and friends stories of our entrepreneurs, they listen! This challenge event is an easy way to spread the word about our projects, in a season when (for UK supporters) we can be outdoors with up to 6 friends but still can’t gather in larger groups. Of course the fundraising dimension is important too, and we’re so thankful to our generous sponsors.

Challenge Hound is a platform which helps individuals and organisations create and track group challenges & races. When we log our miles through Challenge Hound they’ll update the map above so we can see how far we’ve gone together!

Fill in the form above and we’ll email you the link to our challenge on Challenge Hound. When you click on the link all you have to do is click the green “Join Challenge” button and Challenge Hound will talk you through the rest! It is completely free for you to sign up and participate.

Yes, we'd love you to! Thanks to our friends at Eigen, Glorious Brands and Weatherbys you don't have to fundraise; we aim to raise £8,544 through the team effort. But we’ve heard some of you would like to do a bit of additional fundraising and of course, we’d love you to do that. You or your friends can make a donation here or you can set up your own fundraising page through Enthuse so that your friends or colleagues can sponsor you for every mile too. If you need any assistance with setting up a fundraising page, you can reach out to Megan, our Communications & Events officer, by email: megan@fivetalents.org.uk

We’ll still raise £1 per mile; if we cover 1,200 miles, for example, we’ll raise £1,200. But we hope between us we can make it to the finish line in time and release the full £8,544!

Yes please! In fact why not invite up to five friends and all six of you can you log your miles! They simply need to register themselves here.

There are two ways to log an activity with Challenge Hound. You can do so manually or by connecting an app.

To log an activity manually visit this link You’ll then click “log an activity” and be able to input your activity, the time it took and the distance travelled. Then click save and it will add the activity mileage to the map!

Alternatively, if you’d prefer, you can connect an App listed on the Apps page and activities will be automatically synced to Challenge Hound. Challenge Hound currently supports Under Armour (Map My Run, Map My Walk, Map My Hike, Map My Ride, etc) Garmin Connect and Strava. Visit the following link to set up your app.

If you connect an app, Challenge Hound will automatically sync applicable activities, so there is no need to manually enter. Whether you manually enter or use an App, you'll receive an email notification with your challenge status after each activity you log. You can visit Challenge Hound to view your personal challenge dashboard, as well as full challenge leader boards and charts.

Please try to log your miles on the same day you do them so that we can keep the team moving forward, but don’t worry if you forget. You can log them the next day instead - or any time before 23.59 on 8th May!

Don’t worry, you don’t need to use any fancy technology! If you have a sports watch or app on your phone, this will track your mileage for you exactly but if not, please do simply estimate. Many of us have our favourite routes after several months of lockdown exercise and we know roughly how long they are; please simply round to the nearest half-mile and round down rather than up so that we are honest! You can also plot your route on Google Maps, mapmyrun, OS maps and several other online mapping applications - or you can use a piece of string and a ruler on the OS map as we all used to do!

You can start any time from one minute past midnight on Saturday 1st May. You must complete your final mile by 23.59 on Saturday 8th May.

While it’s not necessary to share your story or your journey with us - we’d love to connect with you as we travel across eastern Africa. You can share photos of your activity with us by posting them on social media with the hashtag #TourdeTalents. Or if you aren’t a keen social media user but wouldn’t mind Five Talents sharing the image to promote our journey ping it to us in an email.

Yes, of course! Please feel free to 'count' any miles you do for Captain Tom 100 as Tour de Talents miles as well. Our challenge is not explicitly about seeking sponsorship or fundraising from participants so there is no competition, and we love supporting charities at home as well as internationally.

Our Senior Communications & Events Officer, Megan, is happy to answer any question that may not be found here! She can’t promise to have all the answers but will do her best to handle all your queries and play tech support if you need her to! Email her at: megan@fivetalents.org.uk

Eigen was formed in 2007 by a team of engineers who understand operations and computers. They are a forward thinking technology supplier and systems integrator, passionate about delivering Intelligent Operations and Digitalisation in the Oil & Gas industry covering reservoir, production and drilling.

Glorious Brands is a beauty product specialist, dedicated to providing dynamic sales, marketing and distribution expertise to their clients. They use years of knowledge and experience to identify desirable beauty products and place them with the appropriate retailers to succeed in the highly competitive beauty market.

Weatherbys Private Bank and Weatherbys Racing Bank have both continued the tradition of the parent company, founded in 1770, of providing exceptional levels of personal service as well as a reassuringly reliable place to do banking. They deliver a one-to-one relationship with a dedicated banker who is always easy to contact and quick to respond to client needs.