Sean Curnow: Welcome to the eleventh update for the UAE Charity Challenge Team.

The Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge is less than 2 weeks away now. The race begins with a Super Special spectator stage near Abu Dhabi city on the 27th March to decide the starting order. The official race then starts on the 28th March with competitors departing Abu Dhabi and heading out for 5 days into the Liwa Desert and the Moreeb area of the Empty Quarter (Rub Al Khali), the world's largest uninterrupted sand mass boasting some of its highest dunes.

Broken Bikes & Broken Bodies – All in the name of Charity!

We recently had confirmation that Darryn Keast will be unable to ride this year. Darryn sustained a torn Achilles Tendon whilst playing in the Dubai Rugby 7’s competition in Dec 09. It was always going to be a long shot that Darryn would recover in time to be ready for the ADDC 2010, less than 4 months after he sustained the injury. Whilst his recovery has been ahead of schedule and he has maintained a strict gym routine – doctor’s advice is that he will not be ready for the rigours of 5 days in the ‘Empty Quarter’. Darryn will still be involved assisting with the support team for the remaining three riders.

Did I say three riders? Unfortunately I am also awaiting final doctor’s orders before I can confirm I will be riding for the UAECC 2010. On 13th Feb 10 whilst riding in Round 6 of the FIM Desert X Baja series on as part of our training for the ADDC2010, I took what seemed like a fairly routine fall down the face of a steep dune. However, I soon discovered that I had in fact broken my left collar bone in the fall. 2 days later I was in surgery having the collar bone repaired using a titanium plate with 8 screws. With 6 weeks to recover before the official start of the race – it will be touch and go as to whether the bone has sufficiently healed for me to seriously consider riding. A final x-ray on the 23rd March will be the deciding factor in my decision to ride. However, the signs are extremely positive at this stage. I am already back in the gym maintaining my cardio and the strength and range of movement in my left arm is excellent given I only sustained the injury just over 2 weeks ago.

And now for the bikes! During the same weekend of racing (12th/13th Feb 10) we suffered two mechanical failures with Fransua and Pauls bikes. Paul had a major failure of his gear box which saw him drop out of Round 6 and meant that his gear box had to be rebuilt. Fransua in the same race suffered a puncture to his radiator. The damage was sufficient that the whole radiator had to be replaced.

It has been a very different build up from 2008 where sponsorship was much easier to come by, we had few mechanical challenges and all 4 riders not only made it to the start line of the UAE Desert Challenge, all 4 riders completed the race on their first attempt - surprising many.

The UAECC 2010 can best be summed up as ‘Broken Bikes and Broken Bodies – All in the name of Charity’. However, all going well from here on in, we will have 3 bikes / riders on the start line to represent all our sponsors.

CHARITY

Malaria Consortium

I met with a Mitra Feldman of the Malaria Consortium whilst in Uganda recently. We discussed how we could build on our previous LLIN (Long Life Insecticide Net) distribution programme. Mitra has proposed a training programme whereby we will train 5 representatives in each village to not only respond / treat Malaria but to also deal with the Pneumonia and Diarrhoea (the two other primary medical challenges facing people living in the area).

“The purpose of this project is to provide prompt and effective community-based case management (CCM) of the major febrile childhood illnesses pneumonia (acute respiratory infection, ARI), diarrhoea and malaria in underserved rural areas. This projects intervention is expected to contribute to the goal of under-five mortality reduction with a target of reducing all cause under-five mortality (post peri-natal) up to 35% and avert up to 30,000 child deaths.

These major interventions will be carried out through village health teams (VHTs) who will be provided with free diagnostics and treatment tools, training, job aids, supervision, and communication for behavioural change of caretakers and health staff. Treatment for malaria will be with an Artemisinin Combination Therapy (ACT) plus Rapid Diagnostic Tests (RDT) for the confirmation of plasmodium falciparum parasites. For pneumonia the diagnostic tool used will be the respiratory rate measured with a respiratory timer or similar device and assessment for chest in-drawings. Treatment will be provided in the form of the antibiotic Amoxycillin, and oral rehydration solution (ORS) and zinc will be provided for children with diarrhea.”

We will keep you updated!

Princess Haya Awards

The UAE Charity Challenge has been nominated or the Princess Haya Award for Special Education under the category Outstanding Campaign / Fund Raising Campaign.

The Princess Haya Award for Special Education (www.phase.com) covers numerous categories. The Dubai Centre for Special Needs, for whom we raised 185,400 AED in 2008, have nominated the UAE Charity Challenge.

“Whilst you never get involved in this sort of charitable work for awards – they are a nice way of recognising the effort everyone involved puts in to improve the lives of people less fortunate than themselves. I consider simply being nominated as recognition of our efforts and hope that it serves to motivate the UAE Charity Challenge Team to attempt to reach our target of 500K AED sponsorship funding for 2010 in what are very tough economic conditions.”

The awards are due to be announced in April 2010. We will keep you informed as to the results.

MEDIA

Saturday 27th November 2009 / The National – Charity at full throttle. An article appeared in The National newspaper covering the UAE Charity Challenge team and our efforts to raise money for our two chosen charities for 2010. See attached web link.

http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091128/MOTORING/7...

Saturday 21st January 2010 / The National – Charity starts in the desert. An article appeared in The National newspaper covering the UAE Charity Challenge teams recent nomination for the Princess Haya Awards for Special Education. See attached web link.

http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100123/MOTORING/1...

SPONSORSHIP

2009 / 2010 has been a tough year for everyone with the Financial Crisis. This has been reflected in our ability to retain existing sponsors and attract new ones. As such we are going to fall well short of our target of 500,000 AED for this year. However, we hope to reach 200,000 AED in sponsorship support before we close out our efforts for 2010.

We have been capturing all our Sponsors commitment to the UAECC 2010 in Sponsorship Updates posted to the website. Included in these are messages of support for what we are trying to do – which have served as great motivation to everyone involved in the UAECC 2010. Thanks as always to all our sponsors!

WEBSITE

Our new website is up and running and we encourage you to visit and check out the videos, photos and numerous articles that have been uploaded over the last few months as the team builds towards the ADDC (Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge) 2010.

We specifically suggest you check out our most recent video on You Tube to get a feel what it is like to ride a bike through a technical section of desert terrain. See web link below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_viVfkb77XE&feature=youtube_gdata