Matthew Swift one of the lead developers of the OpenDS project has been spending a lot of time preparing to the Zurich IronMan Triathlon on July 13th. For those who don’t know an IronMan comprises of a 3.8km swim, 180km bike stage, and then a marathon (42km) all to be completed on consecutively on the same day.
This week, he sent our team an email explaining why he was pushing so hard on himself :
"I am doing it as a challenge in order to raise awareness of a terrible incurable illness called Leukodystrophy and to raise money for research into finding a cure.
My 21 month old son, Joseph, was diagnosed with Leukodystrophy late last year. The illness is progressive and degenerative, and, unless a cure is found, means that he will never sit up, walk, or talk. He is left with very little control over his body.
Any money that I raise will be donated to two charities:
* the ELA in mainland Europe for all Euro based donations. Many of
you will recognize the name ELA as being the the charity for which
Zinedine Zidane is patron* the Myelin Project UK in the United Kingdom for GBP based donations."
Matthew has created a blog called Tri4Joe at http://tri4joe.com. To Matt surprise, his story is starting to spread on the internet and the medias such as the Irish Examiner.
All donations are welcome and can be sent via the blog’s donation page: http://tri4joe.com/donate
And if you choosed to make a donation and happened to be a Sun employee, don’t forget to send Matthew Swift a confirmation email with your employee number and mailstop so that Sun can match the donation.
So join Zinedine Zidane and others to support to Matthew’s cause. Matthew, his wife Colette and their son Joseph will be thankful.
Ludo Sketches 