Throughout March RSPB Cymru were raising funds for our Gola rainforest project in Sierra Leone. Our work is so much more than a simple rainforest conservation effort, with a focus on helping the 25,000 inhabitants learn to live a more sustainable lifestyle as well as documenting the new scientific finds which continue to surprise and amaze us. With 49 species of endangered mammal, including the wonderfully sweet pygmy hippo, the Gola rainforest has much to give us and deserved our special attention.
We got up to so much through the month but the real winner was our stationary bike ride at St David’s shopping centre in Cardiff which earned us almost £1000 through the week along with some brilliant bucket collection efforts by staff and volunteers alike. We decided to get the staff and volunteers at RSPB Cymru moving with our stationary bike challenge to bring home our key sustainability message. Could we manage the 5000km ride from Wales HQ to the Gola Rainforest in just a matter of days? There was only one way to find out! The shoppers at St David’s got to watch our challenge play out all through the week and were pretty impressed with the speed at which we managed to move! Even the security guards stopped by to comment on our efforts.
Our bike ride kicked off on the Monday with our stationary bike already in Spain thanks to all of the kilometres donated by our wonderful staff, volunteers and Twitter followers. From Spain to Morocco, then through Algeria and Mauritania. Our efforts almost stalled on day three when the batteries in the bike’s monitor ran out and we couldn’t tell how far we were getting but the day was saved by a quick trip to buy batteries. We carried on through Mali and Guinea with some extra miles donations via Twitter to boost our progress and finally made our way into the Gola rainforest in Sierra Leone ten days after we’d started.
All the money we raised through March was match funded by Size of Wales, so our £1321.41 is now a fantastic £2642.82! To learn more about Size of Wales, go to www.sizeofwales.org.uk