A FITNESS expert has been helping a student from Wokingham raise money for his World Challenge expedition to Madagascar.

Heidi Strickland-Clark, has been helping the teenager from the Forest School in Winnersh to raise money for his trip at the Bearwood Recreation Ground.

Tom, a pupil from the school will be going to Madagascar with 18 other school students in July this year.

He said: “We will be away from home for four weeks where we will be doing a lot of trekking and community work as well as doing lots of amazing things travelling around.

“This is going to be a fantastic life experience for me."

The teenager has been taking part in fit camps with Heidi on Sundays, as well as completing training hikes.

Ms Clark runs outdoor fast track fitness camps in the Wokingham Borough for residents and likes to help people change their lives.

She added: “I really want people to feel happy and feel healthy despite how much they weigh and what their clothe size is.

“people tend to be striving for this big weight loss goal, which makes them more depressed.”

A total of £2.5k needs to be raised for the trip to go ahead.

Tom said: “For the past 2 years, I have saved all of my birthday and Christmas money.

“I’ve been doing jobs around the house for mum and dad, I’ve packed bags at Waitrose and now Heidi is holding a charity fit camp to help me raise more money.

“I'm also going to start to do some sponsored activities to raise the rest but as you can imagine in quite hard to find the time when I’m also having a study for my GSCE.”

The fitness camp session raised £200 for the expedition but another £700 is needed to reach the final amount.

For more information about the Madagascar trip visit: https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/tom-higgins?utm_term=DEx7b3yDB.