Around the World in 80 Ways: Our 19,000km Charity World Tour

Jon Wilton

A team challenge during lockdown

Starting last year, during the height of the pandemic we were all worried about the effects on exercise brought about by working remotely, and our global team being in varying severities of lockdown. As both a fun way to promote activity, and a charity drive, we developed the idea of a virtual tour to the majority of cities where we have consultants based. To travel, we would convert exercise done weekly by our team into kilometres travelled as the crow flies.

Tim Passingham at the top of Scarfell Pike in the Lake District

Screenshot of the rules of the challenge

Desmond Poon riding his bike downhill and smiling

The route

The most efficient route was calculated by the son of our former Chief of Staff, who worked out the most efficient route himself and calculated all the distances for us. Thanks Reuben, you are a genius! The cities, and cumulative distance (km), in order (*we omitted sea miles in this challenge):

Spreadsheet screenshot showing the miles between our offices

Running, cycling, galloping and more

A photo of Reuben jumping a fence on his horse

To join the challenge staff just had to track their various activities and enter the km into a spreadsheet. Julian Hoyle, Former Data Analyst, created a conversion tool to turn almost any exercise into km. This included walking, running and cycling, of course (easily tracked on apps like Strava), but we extended it to include activities like horse riding, yoga and tennis too.

Jason Jennings and a friend outside at a cafe wearing cycle gear

Pete Nisbet, Managing Partner of edenseven, our sustainable transformation company, kindly collated km travelled and gave weekly updates at our partner meetings: placing our current position on the map and telling us miles to go till next destination. Whenever we reached a destination, amid much virtual fanfare, the consultant at that location chose a charity and a donation of £100 was made for each city by the company.

Just a few of the charities we supported:

British Exploring Society (Cambridge, UK)

Variety, the Children's Charity (www.variety.org.au/vic/) (Melbourne, Australia)

The National Autistic Society for Brighton (UK)

Community of Sant'Egidio (Rome)

Ozkroky (ozkroky.sk) (helping homeless people to return into a normal life) (Bratislava)

Triangle Génération Humanitaire (trianglegh.org) (Lyon, France)

Casade David (Sao Paulo, Brazil)

Freedom8848 (Canada)

20ans1 Projet (20ans1projet.fr) (Paris)

In total we travelled almost 20,000km and raised over £1,600 for our charities. Everyone contributed in some way, either by running a marathon, dog walking, horse riding, long weekend hikes, mountain hikes in Canada and more.

Will we do it again?

The challenge started on 22 January 2020, and we finished in July 2021. In our first week we collectively travelled 1,029km. It has been a great success for the team, promoting a shared experience of physical activities and we even learned a bit more about each other on the way.

We look forward to our next challenge, but in the meantime I’m going to put my feet up.

Jon Wilton under an arch on a trail run in Dorset

About Us

Cambridge Management Consulting is a specialist consultancy drawing on an extensive network of global talent. We are a growth catalyst, assembling a team of experts to focus on the specific challenges of your market.

With an emphasis on digital transformation, we can help any business attempting to scale by combining capabilities such as marketing acceleration, digital innovation, talent acquisition and procurement.

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