In the year the Queen celebrated her diamond jubilee and dated James Bond…

London Hosted the Olympics and solved it’s congestion problems….

And Team GB won more gold than Gordon Brown could dream of….

You too can have a challenge and something to remember by joining Walking With Bears, my Sense International 2012 trek challenge.

I promise that not all the trekkers will be bears, but over 5 days and 60 miles in the autumnal ancient woods and forests of Maramures, you may well get a glimpse of them before they bury themselves under the duvet for winter.

In aid of Sense International, the charity that supports the teaching of children who are both deaf and blind to communicate with their parents and the world, this is a trek with a difference: taking you back decades to a simpler way of life and tradition, but with the comfort of a good hotel and food to come back to each night and good company each day. The tallest wooden churches in the world, the merry cemetery, traditional rural life, steam trains and “how to fell and log a tree with two hand tools” are just some of the things we’ll see.

Our mission is to fund the first year of Sense International Romania's vocational training program for deaf blind teenagers. Having been taught at SI projects how to communicate with the world, this project will seek to equip the deafblind teenagers with skills to be economically self-sufficient in a tough and commercial world. This project will complete the successful cycle of training established by Sense International in Romania, from their innovative early intervention program spotting sight and hearing defects in the first few months, through the 13 special needs centres trained by SI to teach parents to communicate with their deaf blind children.

We can't promise you bears, or bulls for that matter, but your help will win international recognition and we can promise you that if you join us the funds you raise will make a direct difference to someone's future and they will be eternally grateful.

So what can you do?

A) JOIN US! September 28- October 5th send me a private message for more info
or
B) SEND a friend, spouse, partner, colleague to walk for you.
or
C) HELP US with a donation, corporate or personal, large or small

Please help us to help them.

For those of you who don’t know, I have supported Sense International each year since 2006 and this will be the 5th trek I have organised as a fund raiser. These have been really good fun events, but the sums raised each year have made a significant difference to what is a small highly cost efficient charity.

Many thanks
Ana