DESCRIPTION:
I've climbed over 23,520 ft for charity - heading up Mt. Everest!

Please consider even a small donation for the cause!

Here is a summary of the project:
http://www.firstgiving.com/urbaneverest

Thanks for any support! It's a cause well worth it!


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I'm climbing Mount Everest to raise money for The Fistula Foundation.

Well, not exactly climbing the mountain: For a total of 260 times, I will climb from the basement to the roof of my New York City apartment building - 14 floors - which will in the end, sum to at least a height of 29,029 feet, the height of Everest.

Please consider funding my climb, even a few dollars! Really: even a few dollars helps (surgery to repair a fistula is on the order of $300-400)!

I am linking this climb to fundraising for one of the most worthy causes I know of, one involving women's health, a terrible injury many women in developing nations incur while giving birth: obstetric fistula.

A simple search yields this Wikipedia entry:

"Most women living with obstetric fistula also struggle with depression, abandonment by their partners, families and communities, and live in isolation because of the constant leaking and odor. Many women report feelings of humiliation, pain, loneliness, shame and mourning for the loss of their lives and the child they lost during delivery. Because of the constant leaking and smell, many women are isolated from food preparation and prayer ceremonies because they are thought to be constantly unclean. Suicide and attempted suicide are also common amongst women with this condition." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obstetric_fistula

NYTimes Columnist Nikolas Kristof reports on women suffering from fistulas:
"Perhaps the most wretched people on this planet are those suffering obstetric fistulas. This is a childbirth injury, often suffered by a teenager in Africa or Asia whose pelvis is not fully grown. She suffers obstructed labor, has no access to a C-section, and endures internal injuries that leave her incontinent — steadily trickling urine and sometimes feces through her vagina.

She stinks. She becomes a pariah. She is typically abandoned by her husband and forced to live by herself on the edge of her village. She is scorned, bewildered, humiliated and desolate, often feeling cursed by God.

I've met many of these women — or, often, girls of 13, 14, 15 — in half a dozen countries, for there are three million or four million of them around the world. They are the lepers of the 21st century." www.nytimes.com/2009/11/01/opinion/01kristof.html

But organizations like The Fistula Foundation (http://www.fistulafoundation.org/) are working to prevent and treat fistula's worldwide through education and medical training.

"There's no more rewarding experience for a surgeon than a successful fistula repair," Dr. Wall reflected. "There are a lot of operations you do that solve a problem — I can take out a uterus that has a tumor in it. But this is life-transforming for everybody who gets it done. It's astonishing. You take a human being who has been in the abyss of despair and — boom! — you have a transformed woman. She has her life back." - Dr. Lewis Wall

Each climb will be recorded on video and posted here: www.youtube.com/user/UrbanEverest