Cape Town student sets out to be first quadriplegic woman to conquer Kilimanjaro
If all goes well‚ her team will summit Kilimanjaro on September 3‚ and Cape Town student Chaeli Mycroft will be the first female quadriplegic to have reached the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro. Twenty-year old ability activist Mycroft is expected to start her seven-days climb on Thursday (20) with seven other climbers “to raise funds in support of The Chaeli Campaign’s Inclusive Education Programme and The Chaeli Cottage Inclusive Preschool and Enrichment Centre”.The Chaeli Campaign “promotes and provides mobility and educational needs for disabled children under the age of 18 years‚ throughout South Africa”.The campign’s website said it believes that: “Physical/intellectual impairment is self-evident and can be dealt with. Disability is created by the way in which society responds to the impairment”.Mycroft‚ who is a social science student at the University of Cape Town‚ reaching Africa’s tallest peak - and the highest free-standing mountain in the world – should go some way to changing that response.The preparation for Mycroft and her fellow climbers - Adam Schäfer‚ Taylor Jackson‚ Sally Grierson‚ Thembi Chagonda‚ Anne Henschel and Johanna Gallego - was “done under the guidance of Carel Verhoef‚ an East African travel expert at Discover Africa”.Mycroft’s journey will be chronicled here...
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