A young Iraqi girl often overheard her family talking about the Iraqi Christians In Need charity and the suffering of Christians in Iraq. These regular stories of desperation in her family’s home country seem to have lit a spark in her and set her on a fundraising mission.
Tia’s awareness of those in need, led her to raise thousands of pounds for ICIN. She cycled 14km and is just 9 years old.
On Sunday 31st Oct 2010 Tia awoke to face her challenge, a 10km sponsored cycle in aid of ICIN. However, none of the previous weeks rehearsals could have prepared Tia for the adverse weather conditions that day. Determined as ever, Tia zipped up her parka, re-checked the contents of her rucksack, adjusted her cycling helmet and set off with her Dad through the torrential rain.
It soon became apparent that the planned route, which was mainly off-road, was going to be very demanding, tiring and extremely muddy. Tia was not phased though, and actually led the way for most of the journey through Oxshott, Claygate and Esher. Around 3hrs later and what eventually transpired to be a 14km journey, an exhausted Tia arrived at the Fairmile Inn in Cobham where she was greeted by friends, family and various members of ICIN.
Her original target was to raise £1,000 for the charity, but it soon became evident by the number of kind donations that this target would need to be raised. In fact it proved to be a full time job for the ICIN website team who kept raising the targets due to the momentum and continued support for Tia. To date, TIa’s extremely admirable fundraising drive raised over £4,400 for ICIN.
Tia’s words: “Thank you all for sponsoring me and for helping me break my original target . I’m sure the money raised will help those Iraqi Christians in desperate need of help and less fortunate than us and I hope what I have done will bring more awareness to this amazing charity. Lots of Love Tia x”