As the Tour de France inspires millions around the world this month, it’s worth remembering that you don’t need to be a professional cyclist to make a difference.

That’s exactly how O2e began when a group of friends decided to cycle from London to Paris to help others less fortunate than themselves. What started as an ambitious challenge for a group of ordinary people has grown into a charity that has raised more than £3 million for small charities supporting children and young people with disabilities or life-limiting conditions.

Andrew Stammers, from O2E explains more.

Tell us how O2e began

O2e was set up 20 years ago by three friends who decided it was time to do something to make a difference for people less advantaged as themselves. They put together a group to cycle from London to Paris. These were not finely tuned athletes, but a group of ordinary guys about to do something extraordinary and well outside of their comfort zone. And so, O2e was born and over 20 years has supported over 30 small charities, focussed on children and young people with disabilities or life limiting conditions. These small charities around the country will rely entirely on the support and generosity of the public and never more than now was our funding needed. We have raised over £3 million since the charity was set up and every penny raised goes directly to the charities with no deductions for expenses. All O2e events are run by volunteers and we are proud of everyone, from participants, supporters and volunteers.

What’s your biggest challenge?

Our biggest challenge is to keep our supporters interested in donating to our charities. We run a number of group events, such as our bike ride, gala ball and London Bridge Walk and this year our first celebrity sports lunch. Members also run in the London Marathon in support of O2e, plus many other individual challenges.

Our mantra is that you need to push yourself outside of your comfort zone. Donor fatigue is a huge challenge as we have a core group of supporters raising funds through sponsorship and in challenging times, people really have to make a choice where their charity pound goes. Attracting new members is also a challenge. The core of the group are all in their 60s and we need to grow the numbers of 30 somethings to become the new generation of our charity.

This is really our vision, to grow and expand the membership and introduce new challenges that will appeal to a new younger group who share our passion to support children and families less fortunate than ourselves.

What does the support of ADS and our members mean to O2E?

Having the support from ADS is a new diversion for us and is so welcome. By increasing the brand awareness of O2e, we would hope that this will create new interest in other parts of the country and our model will grow as our older core group start to slow down a little!

We are really excited to have ADS as a new springboard for supporting our five charities. We try to visit all of the groups we support during the year to see the amazing work these charities do and see how important our funds are in allowing these charities to thrive. Money is so tight and many charities who previously relied on Trusts and Foundations are seeing these sources of income dry up, so adding new funding sources to what we do at O2e is so important.

Tell us more abou the epic bike ride to Japan

One of the Founding Fathers of O2e is Paul Slattery, aka Slatts. Slatts is an erstwhile rugby player and City trader and throws himself into everything he does with total commitment and the ability to drag unsuspecting souls along with him. Since retiring a couple of years ago, Slatts has taken on some extraordinary challenges. His retirement gift to himself was to cycle alone and with only what he could carry, from Woldingham to Istanbul.

This year, he dragged a small group of willing friends on an epic 2000 mile bike ride across Korea and Japan, ending up, slightly saddlesore in Tokyo. By keeping his supporters at home involved in the journey, his loyal batman, Pat Moran kept an online diary of the various scrapes along their way. This helped to raise around £7,000 for our charities as messages of support were matched with hard earned pounds. It is this kind of commitment that makes O2e so special and why I am so proud to be associated with such an inspiring group of people.