Coast to Coast for Clean Force

"Mark Lawson, Sam Donaldson and Myself (Leons Ansons) are all colleagues who work for Fulton Hogan and Laing O'Rourke. We are all different ages and take up vastly different roles whilst working on the North Eastern Alliances Level Crossing Removal Project. We came together with a passion for sport and exercise, playing basketball, going surfing and enjoying our time outside of work. Somehow the conversation started on competing in a sporting event in New Zealand. 'Why not?' we said.

Then all of a sudden we had committed, somewhat ignorantly, to competing in New Zealand's Coast to Coast world Multi Sport Adventure Race. Where we will have two days and under 24 hours to cover 243 km of tough terrain starting on the West Coast of New Zealand at Kumara Beach, crossing the main divide and finishing on the East Coast at New Brighton Beach in Christchurch. The brutal and challenging race includes a 70km kayak, 33.7km of mountain running and 140 km of cycling.

Once the realisation of just how large this event will be dawned on us, we started to realise how inspiring our commitment and dedication to training could become. That is when the idea of fundraising alongside the event came to the forefront of our brains. Our project team is highly invested and interested in employing and incorporating social enterprises into our business one of those in particular is Clean Force, a social enterprise that provides top-notch commercial cleaning services and creates sustainable award-wage employment opportunities for people with severe mental illness. The absolute kindness and dedication of dealing with some of clean force's owners absolutely moved us. The first thought of their organisation was a 'no brainer.'

The problem was that, at this point, we had all never ever really ran a large fundraiser before. We didn't really know how to get started. The first steps were to get the word out there and to develop a fundraising page. The word was easy, we had friends, family and colleagues in our respective businesses that we could look to for donations and spreading the word. Now, the page, that was not so easy. Numerous, multinational online fundraising pages taking commission after commission. I finally stumbled across Chuffed.org. Another 'non-for-profit' enterprise that shared similar interests. Bam, a match made in heaven.

Now, from the kindness of businesses around Australia, our friends, our family and our colleagues. Clean Force has over $8000 in donations to help provide further education, training and materials for their employees. Opportunities that will help grow the business and give more jobs to those who need it most."

Learn more about this awesome cause in the Clean Force crowdfunding campaign page below: