This blog post was written by Megan Henderson, our Senior Communications & Events Officer.

Last year, you joined us on an unforgettable virtual lockdown journey: the 2021 Tour de Talents. The virtual route of 2,848 miles visited all of our programmes in eastern Africa so that you could ‘meet’ Savings Group members whilst generous sponsors offered to donate for every mile covered over the challenge week.

We were overwhelmed as together, you quickly passed each benchmark until just 3 days into our 7 day journey, we reached the finish line! After extending the challenge (twice!) we finally wrapped up the week having travelled 7,040 miles and raised over £11,000. We asked ourselves: but what will we do next?

Knowing our wonderful supporters would rise to the challenge,we dreamed up our 2022 challenge: 30 days, 30,000 miles, £30,000 raised – in support of the 30,000 members our partners supported last year. It was ambitious, exciting and maybe just a little bit daunting. But we knew absolutely every mile added up, and together, just like Savings Group members, our combined efforts would push us across the finish line.

“Being in a Savings Group is like taking four to five paces at a time. Your ability is to take one pace at a time, but your Group members support you with the other four paces; hence you reach where you want to go within unexpected time.” - Marcia, Savings Group member

Our generous sponsors (Volante, The Albert Van den Bergh Charitable Trust, The Anchor Match Fund, The Vardy Foundation, and two individual givers) came together to build our £30,000 pot and off the Tour de Talents team went!

We hosted a series of extra challenges to keep everyone motivated too! Tour de Talents participants logged miles from the UK and Scotland, Morocco, the USA, Burundi and more! The challenge’s youngest participant was 20 months old, while one of the oldest participants was 81. We loved seeing your sunrise and wildlife photos, and were overjoyed to receive messages from friends of Five Talents who were becoming more active after chemotherapy thanks to the challenge, or who now row daily thanks to the habits they built during the Tour de Talents.

Possibly one of our favourite moments during the challenge was when Barnardiston Hall Preparatory School had students and parents walk together on their school field – with 192 participants they logged 192 miles for the Tour de Talents during their morning break!

In the end, we travelled 33,714.9 miles and raised £33,715 together. The final total will enable our partners to reach 1,348 new Savings Group members. But there’s only one question; where do we go from here?