This is a event that is undertaken in extreme conditions. As our potentially trepid explorers Steve Kidwell (Director of Clients Services, Total Objects and COINS Foundation Trustee) prepare to head North to Baffin Island as a pre-cursor to the 2010 Polar Race – the rest of us mere mortals sit and perhaps ponder why.

It is undoubtedly the ultimate of personal challenges. The gruelling event in 2010 will start at Resolute Bay in the former North West Territories of Canada, one of the northernmost inhabited settlements, where steve will experience extreme weather condition as low as    -60°C and will also be travelling through the home of polar bears. It will take Steve some 350 miles, by ski or foot, across some of the most desolate terrain in the world to the finishing line, four checkpoints later at the 1996 certified position of the Magnetic North Pole!. Training involves everything from commando training to pulk packing, tent handling, practical GPS work, gun handling, polar bears, endurance, fitness training, team work and the race rules!

Steve will be aiming to raise £50,000 for the COINS Foundation which supports the development of communities primarily in sub-Sharan Africa through funds raised by challenges.  The COINS Foundation also supports projects funded from company profits – a new Academy in the UK which will include programmes to support disabled young people and disenfranchised young people . 

To date through challenge events £1.63 million has been raised and over the last 12 months almost £400,000.00 has been distributed to projects; a high school has been built in Uganda, 200 homes in Mozambique, Uganda and Zambia and a community health programme is planned for Zambia.  Further funds raised this year will be spent on education, health and wealth-creating projects designed to create sustainable and thriving communities in some of the poorest parts of the developing world.  You can find out more at www.coinsfoundation.org

Please help Steve succeed in their ultimate challenge and register your support at: http://www.justgiving.com/Steve-Kidwell