Robinson Services supports A Thirst for Life Endurance Charity Rowing Challenge on Lough Neagh

Over one billion people in the world do not have access to safe water and every fifteen seconds one in four children under the age of five dies in East Africa from water borne diseases!

However five rowing men aim to do something about that! Recently the took on the challenge by rowing over fifty miles round the largest inshore freshwater lake in the British Isles, Lough Neagh – inside just one day, Friday 14th September 2012. Just one freshwater well in East Africa provides enough water for 1,000 people. Lough Neagh supplies clean water for 40% of Northern Ireland’s population of one and a three quarter million. Five men with a thirst for living who want to see their charitable money well spent!

Of the four participating rowers, two are medal winners in the 2012 Olympics; Richard Chambers, Silver medal [twice World Champion] and Alan Campbell, Bronze medal [three-time World Championship medallist], both Team GB. Third is Richard Archibald, a former double World Championship medallist and Finalist in the Athens Olympics for Ireland and the fourth, Jonathan Mitchell [University World Championship Bronze medallist] and 9th in the World this year, rowing for Ireland in the Under-23 Lightweight Men’s Pairs. Their cox and Captain, steering them round the Lough and exhorting them to greater efforts, is Ian Harvey, aged 65 years, a former Irish Schools Eights Champion who has rowed across the world’s largest lakes for Fields of Life and BBC’s Children in Need, creating a `world first`. All at one time rowed for Coleraine Academical Institution, situated on the banks of the River Bann the only sea-borne outlet for Lough Neagh and all are members of COBRA [Coleraine Old Boy’s Rowing Association].

It was a unique event involving of five men of widely different ages from the same rowing organisation who bond together, comrades in rowing, striving to lend hope to those thousands of people without hope. David Robinson, Managing Director Robinson Services who met the rowers along with his son Jack and daughter Lucy commented; “Both Alan Campbell and Richard Chambers were inspirational during The London 2012 Olympics and this particular event proved just as inspirational.  It was a pleasure to meet them and Robinson Services were delighted to contribute to and support this incredibly worthwhile cause.”