In July 2005 with the support of her family, colleagues and friends, Maria started a charity project to help the many families in Dhaka, starting with a one-room school. Maria has spent the last 6 years developing and running humanitarian projects in Bangladesh focusing on providing free education to the children, thus breaking the cycle of poverty.Through her tireless efforts and commitment, her projects has reached over 700 slum children and their families to date.

In 2009, Maria began several other individual projects to eradicate poverty. One such project is the Maria Cristina Foundation, which aims to unlock and maximize human potential in developing countries. The foundation is involved in several current and planned projects, including MC Foundation Recruitment Institute, MC Foundation Community Project, MC Foundation School to School Projects and MC Foundation Community Health Program.

When it comes to her humanitarian efforts, Maria is best known for being a pioneer. In 2010, she brought a group of eight slum-dwelling children to study in UAE. She devotes herself completely to the ongoing challenge of paying for their education. When not occupied in training or fund-raising, Maria can be found typically playing the role of surrogate mother and counselor to these children who have been given such an important opportunity to gain a quality education and an excellent start in life.

Maria also pushes her own physical limits in pursuit of her cause. She is currently training to trek the North Pole in April 2011 to raise much needed funds. Her normal day routine starts at 6.15 am six times a week where she drags tires weighing 30-kilos up and down the beach in preparation for the challenging expedition. This is her second fundraising climb following her 2010 Mount Kilimanjaro climb. Despite a painful knee injury, she has also run several international marathons around the world, including in New York, London, Dublin, Dubai and Beirut.

She generally also spends many hours in meetings to secure sponsorships from local donors, and can also be found at one of many flea markets, selling clothes to raise much-needed funds. Maria has organized and led many fundraising initiatives over the years to raise funds and awareness for her humanitarian projects and to date her efforts has helped hundreds of destitute families and children.

Both organizations have given underprivileged communities the opportunity to transform their lives and go on to live truly rewarding lives. Maria is confident that the newly launched Maria Cristina Foundation will be able to extend support on a larger scale to many more underprivileged communities around the world.

No one is willing to swim in untested waters yet Maria sees no reason to give up on her dreams and passions. She believes in pushing boundaries and her famous saying is “IF NOT WE THEN WHO, AND IF NOT NOW THEN WHEN?” Maria is passionate about her work and a true inspiration to mankind.

If you’d like to know more about Maria’s projects, visit www.mariachristinafoundation.org

The Tula Orphanage School

One of the unfortunate results of the economic upheavals of the post-Soviet period has been the increase in the number of homeless children. In 2001 the Russian government and UNESCO estimated that there were up to three million homeless children in Russia. The Tula Orphanage School was established in 2001 as School- Internat (a home for orphaned school-aged children where they also attend classes inside the School-Internat). This school is one of the biggest in the Tula region and at the present moment has over 150 orphans. Some of the children have been abandoned, some have been orphaned through the death of their parents and some have simply run away from an abusive family. It is common that some of the children have left home due to alcoholism in the family leading to abuse. These children need our help. The school was built on the base of a former printing house and this is why substantial reconstruction and modernization works need to be completed. Government financing is not enough, on its own, to accomplish the tasks required. That is why corporations like ING Commercial Banking in Russia and private individuals take part in fund raising activities to support the orphanage in its endeavors to provide a better home and school for these disadvantaged children.

w w w . w e n d y b o o k e r . n e t

Wendy Booker’s energy seems endless – it takes more than mountaineering, marathons, cycling, skydiving and Multiple Sclerosis to tame her passion for adventure.

In June of 1998, this mother of three was diagnosed with relapsing-remitting MS after experiencing balance problems, blurred vision and numbness on her left side. When first diagnosed, Wendy was devastated. But it took very little time for her to transform anguish into inspiration. She immediately turned her hobby of casual running into a continuous pursuit and has now completed nine marathons with number ten coming up this fall in New York.

Mountain climbing became the next conquest. In 2002 at the age of 46, Wendy joined a team of mountain climbers with MS who were attempting to climb Mt. McKinley (Denali) in Alaska. Although that expedition did not end in a summit, she was not to be deterred. Taking on one of the toughest mountains in the world a second time, Wendy became the first person with MS to stand atop Denali in 2004.

That feeling of accomplishment propelled her next aspiration: to climb the highest mountain on each continent. Just five years later, Wendy successfully reached the top of six mountains on her list – Mt. Kilimanjaro, Mt. McKinley, Mt. Elbrus, Mt. Aconcagua, Mt. Vinson Massif and Mt. Kosciusko – the first person with MS to summit six of the Seven Summits. After two attempts on Mt. Everest in 2009 and 2010, Wendy accepted that she had pushed MS to the highest it would allow her to go. She has found contentment in climbing 6 ½ of the Seven Summits and using the experience to empower others facing adversity to never give up and continue to scale new heights.

Wendy’s passion, strength and tenacity are garnering attention from national and international press, and her career has evolved from interior design to motivational speaking around the globe. The mission is always to educate, motivate and encourage anyone facing a challenge in life to push through and climb on - the view from the top is breathtaking.

Wendy Booker is a mountaineer, an adventurer, an explorer - and she’s not done yet. Next stop: the top of the world… the North Pole!