Seventy of South Africa’s leading business executives returned home this week from the gruelling Change a Life Cycle which took place from 3 – 8 September in Malawi.
Seventy of South Africa’s leading business executives returned home this week from the gruelling Change a Life Cycle which took place from 3 – 8 September in Malawi. 
The exhausted but exhilarated executives raised nearly R3.5 million through their participation in the marathon 480km Malawi tour organised by share-registry company Computershare in order to help combat crime in South Africa. Russell Loubser, CEO of the JSE, David Coutts-Trotter, CEO of Sun International, Peter Gray, CEO of JCI Limited, Tom Boardman, former CEO of Nedbank and Granville Rolfe, MD of Macsteel Trading were amongst the business leaders who took part in this year’s Change a Life Cycle.
Computershare CEO Stan Lorge described the tour as “brilliant, exhilarating, hugely emotional and a lot of hard work. We achieved our aim of raising nearly R3.5 million for charity, which brings us to a total of nearly R9 million raised over the three years since we launched the event,” he said. Computershare is the major sponsor of the tour and matches all funds raised from cyclist entry fees and other sponsorships rand for rand.
The 2010 Change a Life Cycle was heralded as a major event in Malawi, with enthusiastic support from government and local communities who witnessed the cyclists powering through their lakeside villages. As part of the tour’s social contribution, 35 bicycle ambulances were manufactured, with sponsorship by Macsteel, and donated to rural communities living around Lake Malawi to improve their access to local
health clinics and hospitals. 
Computershare launched the Change a Life Cycle in 2008 to fund anti-crime initiatives following the murder of Computershare senior manager Mike Thomson in September 2007. Funds from the Change a Life Cycle are channelled into four anti-crime initiatives: The DNA Project, which is advancing the use of DNA evidence in bringing criminals to justice, the Martin Dreyer Change a Life Academy, which trains disadvantaged youngsters in rural KwaZulu/Natal to become athletes, I Choose to Change a Life, which provides leadership training to teenage offenders so they can launch anti-crime
projects in their communities, and the iThemba Rape and Trauma Support Centre, which provides treatment and counselling for 80-100 victims of crime a month, nearly half of them children.
The media have taken quite an interest in the tour to Malawi. The above is an article which appeared on the SA The Good News website yesterday.
As I receive articles and radio and TV clips, (and there are already quite a few) they are loaded onto the Change a Life website which you can access via the following link http://www.changealife.com.au/Projects/southafrica/Pages/Latest%20News.aspx
Vanessa
