Cameron Bellamy Goes On Another Ubunye Challenge To Support Food For Families

Courtesy of Ubunye Challenge, Issyk-Kul, Kyrgyzstan.

Cameron Bellamy leverages his marathon adventures to raise funds to support the significant projects of the Ubunye Challenge, a charity he founded several years ago. While the focus of the Ubunye Challenge is on providing access to education for children in remote areas of southern Africa, the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing lockdown has necessitated other charitable endeavours be undertaken.

The pandemic also caused a change in his plans to attempt the longest unassisted swim.

In 2019 Bellamy completed an unprecedented 151 km solo swim from Barbados to St Lucia as a result of not being able to attempt a swim from Cuba to Floria. Later when he rowed with a team across the Drake Passage in December 2019, the expedition was tracked by Discovery Channel and a feature length documentary has been commissioned and due out in the near future.

The two feats translated into substantial funds being donated by excited followers of his adventures. The funds supported continued construction of a school in Concession, Zimbabwe and the purchase of tablets for hundreds of children in the Eastern Cape. Its worthy of note that Cameron funds almost 100% of the cost of his endurance feats himself through his regular job in cyber security. All funds raised through donations go directly to projects.

In early May, the Ubunye Foundation, an organization on the ground in the Eastern Cape reached out to the Ubunye Challenge regarding the unbearable plight of many in the Eastern Cape. Katy Pepper, Director of the Foundation, advised that the Early Childhood Centres had been transformed into food depots and a Food Relief Program was underway to feed over eight hundred families that were experiencing extreme hardship. The Program was facing major challenges in distributing the food however due to lack of adequate transport, specifically an off-road vehicle to navigate routes leading to very remote areas.

Recently, Bellamy and his Board of Directors of the Ubunye Challenge voted unanimously to step in and raise funds to purchase the urgently needed vehicle. Half of the cost has already been raised through private donations and now the charity has launched a Go Fund Me Campaign appealing to South Africans and Bellamy’s fans to raise the remainder. Many of the families in great need are the families of children who attend the ECD Centres supported by the Ubunye Challenge. The charity’s fundraising has enabled the gift of learning to reach hundreds of children in remote regions of the Eastern Cape.

Bellamy had an ambitious plan for 2020 to attempt the longest unassisted swim ever across Issyk-Kul Lake in Kyrgyzstan. This feat would have brought considerable attention to the charitable endeavours of the Ubunye Challenge. The pandemic has foiled the plan as the lockdown prevented the many months of arduous swim training needed. The longest swim attempt will be put on hold until August 2021.

Instead, South Africans will finally witness a Bellamy escapade firsthand, as two swims in his homeland are under consideration. A swim from Cape Point to Robben Island, expected to take about 24 hours, in very cold water and a staged swim from Port Elizabeth to East London.

Bellamy says, “I am helping to feed families in the rural Eastern Cape of South Africa. We work with our partners, the Ubunye Foundation, on the ground in the Eastern Cape where we have assisted them to set up 16 early childhood development centers, teaching up to 400 kids a day, over the last 9 years.

This region has been severely affected by the Covid crisis where some of the more rural areas’s supply chains have been completely cut off from the outside world. We are thus assisting the Ubunye Foundation to purchase a new vehicle to reach these areas and deliver the food parcels that have already been allocated to them. This is a long term project as the new vehicle will be used in the future to get access to these areas to set up new and needed early childhood development centers.

Every donation you give will be matched. We are halfway to reaching our target. If you can give anything to assist with this cause we will be deeply grateful. You will be making a huge difference to the families in need.”

Visit the Go Fund Me Campaign Food For Families here.

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