Dig Deep Challenges response to Covid-19

As we are all aware, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused significant disruption and challenges to almost every aspect of our normal lives.

As with every decision we make as an organisation, our response to COVID-19 was carefully considered for the interest of the people we serve; both the communities and schools in Kenya and our supporters here in the UK.

For us at Dig Deep, our international challenge fundraisers are the beating heart of our organisation; without their dedication and commitment over the years, thousands of people would still not have the access to clean water and sanitation that we can proudly say their fundraising has been able to provide.

When this virus started to spread and associated measures began to be put into place, it was clear that the restrictions on people's movements would cast uncertainty over the viability of both the ability of our supporters to continue to fundraise at the same rate and whether the restrictions on travel would be lifted in time to allow the trips to go ahead at all.

These concerns of our own coupled with listening to many of our supporters voicing similar concerns led us to make the difficult decision on 26th March to postpone all our challenge events until next year.

Alongside postponing the trip dates from August 2020 to a choice between March 2021 and August 2021, we also waived the fee to move their trip to the new date, reduced the first fundraising target from £1750 to £1250 and extended the deadline to reach this by 3 months.

By revising the fundraising targets we were able to reduce the pressure and uncertainty our supporters were facing, whilst ensuring that our team can continue to deliver vital handwashing training to communities in Kenya at a time where this is more of a priority now than ever before.

We were able to make this decision swiftly in the interests of the people we serve because of our excellent personal relationships with our local challenge suppliers whom we have worked with for the last 6 years. Understandably the travel and tourism industry has been one of the worst affected from this pandemic but we have been able to work together with our suppliers to get to the position we are in now and we thank them for their support and understanding throughout the process.

By the end of May, all of our current challenge participants who had their trip postponed will have selected their preferred trip date window for 2021 and had their new dates confirmed, we will also be opening registrations for new supporters to join the challenge.

We would like to thank all of our challenge participants for their patience and understanding throughout the process. We hope that like us they are now looking forward to continuing their journey with us and we hope to welcome many more people onto a Dig Deep Challenge over the next year to give everyone something to look forward to next summer!

If you would like to join us in ensuring charity challenges have a post-COVID future then don't hesitate to get in touch by emailing info@digdeep.org.uk, calling 0114 360 1471 or fill out this short form and one of the team will get in touch with you.