On the 26th June 2010, Pole Dance Community approved pole dance school, Soul-POLE undertook a 12 hour Pole-a-thon to raise money for charity.

The charity was started by a woman named Yasmeen Ali (pictured below with Sian), she went to climb Mount Kilimanjaro to raise money for kidney research. When arriving at the bottom of the mountain she met a woman call Mama Lynn who runs an non-government organisation called Light in Africa, Light in Africa runs a feeding project for street kids and orphans in Mirerani, Tanzania.

Yasmeen was so touched by the plight of the children she met that she returned again the next year to see what she could do to help. When she came back from this trip she went for a walk in the woods near her house and as she did her intuition told her to build a school for the children. She at first thought it was a crazy idea, how would she build a school? She said to herself if I am to build it how? She made a few enquires and found out that Mama Lynn has tried to build one before and had land and building plans but no money to build, she gave the land and the building plans to Malaika Africa which is now a registered charity.



Yasmeen knew I had an African heart and that I was interested in using my position as a business owner to promote a better life for those which I can, so she asked me to be one of chair-persons for the charity. I gladly accepted and have set about fund-raising ever since. We held a Holistic therapy day at Soul-POLE earlier this year which raised £898 in a day (£100 was for one dance I performed) then I came up with the pole-a-thon idea and set to work on it.



We had 27 women pole dancing consecutively for 12 hours straight on 5 x-poles we raised £3600 in the one day. Soul-POLE and its students have now raised, in less than 1 year, enough to build one of the class rooms of the school. The school will cost £65,000 to build. We are building the Art room as a room of expression! We aim to get sponsorship to allow a group of Soul-POLE ladies to visit Mirerani next year to help with the build. The day after the pole-a-thon which happened on 26th June 2010 10am-10pm a group of 12 people 2 of which study with Soul-POLE went to Tanzania to start making the bricks and digging the foundations of the school they have made 1000 so far. Some of them are Reiki healers and have blessed and cleansed the land where the school will be built.

We only have £1110 left to raise to have fully paid for and stocked the art room.  If you would like to help with our fund-raising efforts or would like to donate some money to a very worthwhile charity please e-mail me to find out how you can help.

Sian

The Pole Dance Community would like to congratulate Sian and members of Soul Pole for their fantastic fund-raising efforts and for helping to educate the public about the modern fitness phenomenon that is pole dancing.