About

I’m running this 5K for Cities for Children because I have seen their work first-hand in Pakistan, and I know how deeply needed it is. What they do is not just charity in the abstract — they create real programmes for children living in urban poverty that support their learning, play, and wellbeing, grounded in the belief that every child has a right to a childhood. For children who are refugee, street-connected, marginalised, displaced, or growing up in low-income communities, childhood can be taken away far too early. Safety becomes uncertain. Play becomes a luxury. Learning becomes harder to access. Cities for Children works with these realities through programmes like Happy Hoods, which creates creative learning experiences for street-connected children, Partners in Learning, which was developed to support children without access to digital learning, and Care Don’t Scare, which promotes non-violent alternatives to corporal punishment for parents, teachers, and caregivers. They also do advocacy work for the rights of street-connected children, and their humanitarian response has included supporting temporary centres for displaced children and creating safe spaces for learning and play. Their work has also engaged with refugee children in Islamabad, including highlighting the barriers to education and support that many of these children continue to face. That is why this fundraiser means so much to me. Some children are asked to carry things no child ever should — displacement, poverty, exclusion, fear, and instability. Some have had the softness of childhood replaced by survival. And yet they still deserve joy. They still deserve safety. They still deserve the chance to learn, laugh, feel protected, and grow up with dignity. I’m running this 5K to support an organisation that is trying to give that back — to protect childhood where it is under threat, and to stand beside children whose lives have been pushed to the margins for far too long. If you are able to donate, please do. Every contribution will help support work that brings care, hope, and opportunity to children who deserve so much more from this world.

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