Landmark joins MapAction Marathon Team to help save lives and minimise suffering in humanitarian crises

We’re extremely proud to be supporting two of our employees who have been selected to join the MapAction Team in this year’s Virgin London Marathon.  Landmark has provided long-standing support for MapAction - a leading provider of mapping services and information management expertise for humanitarian emergencies who exist to save lives and minimise suffering. 

Colin Blears, Business Development Manager based at our Reading offices, and Victoria Tomalin, Data Researcher located at our Exeter site, will be joining a Director from Ordnance Survey, a surveyor for Historic Scotland and a mum of four who has always dreamt of running the marathon.

With an average age of 36, and based in far flung locations across the UK from Southampton up to Edinburgh, the MapAction Team will be running the 26.2 miles on Sunday 26^th April with a group target of raising at least £5,000.

With 88 days to go, both Colin and Victoria are balancing work and home life with a tough training regime to get them prepared for the big day. Interest will be particularly high this year as it will be world record holder and three-time London champion Paula Radcliffe’s final farewell to marathon running.  The world’s greatest men’s marathon runners will go head-to-head over the marathon distance for the first time: former world-record holder Kipsang will defend his London Marathon title against fellow Kenyan Kimetto, the man who made history last year when he broke Kipsang’s record to become the first man ever to run 26.2 miles in less than two hours three minutes.

Making a difference in humanitarian emergencies

Landmark has provided long-standing support for MapAction since 2011, during which time over £16,000 has been rasied in donations to support their emergency mapping service.  

Landmark has also shown leadership in its support for employee, Darren Connaghan, to deploy on MapAction’s emergency missions.  Darren first joined MapAction as a volunteer in 2005 and became a trustee of the charity in 2013. He has undertaken 7 deployments to date, the most recent in March with the rapidly evolving outbreak of Ebola in Guinea.

Since Landmark first launched its partnership with MapAction, the charity has undertaken 22 humanitarian deployments.  Liz Hughes, Chief Executive of MapAction commented:

“MapAction has recently launched a new strategy which aims to do more – much more – to help save lives and minimise suffering in humanitarian crises. A key part of this strategy is our aim to deploy to twice as many emergencies by 2019. This will require us to recruit, train and deploy more skilled volunteers like Darren, as well as develop innovative new ways of delivering our service, including our new web mapping capability.  Underpinning this strategy are our supporters, like Landmark Information Group, without whom our work is just not possible.”

You can show your support for Colin and Victoria by donating here:

Colin’s page: http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/ColinBlears

Victoria’s page: http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/VictoriaTomalin1