Suraj walks the marathon - 23rd April 2023

Hello, I'm Suraj and I love deep conversations over a decent coffee. Even better, a deep conversation on a long walk, with a stop (or two) for coffee.

What has inspired me to take on the challenge to walk all 26.2 miles of the TCS Virtual London Marathon this April 23rd is the wonderful work of Raj Saubhag Humanitarian in and around the village of Sayla, in rural Gujarat.

All of the funds I raise will be supporting the running of the existing hospital, a specialist eye hospital and rehabilitation centres for the disabled.

Every month, the Community Health Centre hospital conducts 60 deliveries, nearly 500 operations, 6000 lab tests, 150 x-rays and sees around 7500 outpatients and over 700 inpatients. £25 pays for 50 antenatal visits, £50 pays for one hundred x-rays and £200 pays for more than 40 minor operations.

The eye hospital conducts over 1,100 procedures a month and will soon reach 1,500 a month, at £15 per eye surgery.

At the Ashirvad Centres for the Disabled, donors can spend £240 per year to cover the rehabilitation for one child (sponsoring a child covers a large part of the centres' costs) or spend £45 to sponsor a meal for all the children at a centre.

Your sponsorship could even fund transport for all the children to get to a centre. This costs £20 per day. Transportation is important because the children aren't local, they can't use public transportation and their parents cannot afford to take time off work to bring the child to the centre. 

The dem

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Epic day. Completed in about 8 hours (plus a bit). Delighted with the incredible support. 

It's the night before the marathon, so a quick donations update from me before I go to sleep and energise for the day ahead.

With your sponsorship, we've raised over £2500! That includes almost £500 on my Facebook Fundraiser, over £1300 on this fundraising page and almost £700 offline. 

If we include Gift Aid, that's almost £2800 for the charity so far. 

This is amazing. Thank you all so much.

Photo from a recent training walk with friends and fellow supporters of Raj Saubhag Humanitarian.

The original fundraising target was £1200 and with your generous donations we've gone beyond £1600 (plus Gift Aid)! 

This includes all your donations listed on this page, £292 in donations on the Facebook Fundraiser and £662 in direct donations to the charity.

I'm now pushing this target up - lets see where we can take this together.

Amazingly timed with the half marathon milestone, we’ve now reached over half the fundraising target of £1200, with £612 pledged (offline) and another £100 or so in online donations.

Your support this way is received with love and very much appreciated.

Yesterday I'd set a goal to hit the milestone of a half-marathon (13.1 miles). Here's a short video update while I was on the training walk as well as photos of lunch (falafel pitta), coffee and vegan lemon cake, as promised.

I was feeling a little anxious about whether I would complete the full 26.2 miles on marathon day in just three weeks from now (April 23rd). Having hit yesterday's milestone and feeling very little soreness in my legs and feet, I'm much more hopeful!

The next milestone I'm striving for is 20 miles (just over three quarters of a marathon), which I'm planning for next weekend.

The Eye Hospital in Sayla town centre is equipped with the latest PHACO machines and conducts surgery for glaucoma, pterygium and corneal relaxing procedures. There are two full-time ophthalmic surgeons Dr Kamalbhai Shah and Dr Vidhyut supported by their team of staff.

Patients are screened in Out-patient Clinics or Eye Camps. All treatment, including surgery, lens implants, medication and in-patient care with meals, is provided completely free of charge. Patients are welcome to give donations, and many do, even those from poor backgrounds.

Did a 10 mile walk as part of my training, including a couple of stops. Met my wife Heena for a coffee at Caffè Nero in Stanmore and then stopped off for some pani puri at Belmont Circle. Got to keep the energy up!