A Salford father will be joining a team of twenty beneficiaries and staff to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in October.
The group including Brendan Shryane, 34, will be ascending the highest mountain in Africa to raise awareness and funds to support men struggling with a loss of a loved one.
Currently living in Swinton and growing up in Monton he will be flying to Africa on Thursday 3 October.
Where he will embark on a five day ascend to the summit of the mountain in honour of his son Archie who sadly passed away shortly after birth.
His son was born during lockdown in 2020 and was sadly born with an extremely rare lung complication (Alveolar capillary dysplasia).
The complication was so rare that there has only ever been 200 people with the same disease recorded across the world.
And after five days of himself and wife Melanie’s suffering, they lost their child, as he described: “They did as much as they could. But it was incurable.
“I didn’t want to speak to anyone, I almost became closed off because I thought nobody would understand or know what I was going through.
“That was the wrong way of dealing with it.”
As he continued to share on Instagram: “I felt that there was nobody I could talk to who truly knew how I was feeling.”
Also explaining on Instagram the difficulty of sharing the news to his then two and half year-old daughter, Mila, as he said: “Our daughter Mila became the sole reason to get out of bed each morning.
“Despite the pain and heartbreak, we had to keep going for her.”
And despite the heartbreaking story, Brendan wanted to share that he now has a two-year-old son called Harvey, which he described “he was our rainbow baby.”
After a while of suffering, he decided to raise money for the ICU that looked after Archie in St. Mary’s Children hospital, in Manchester.
And since struggling for months he would use the motivation to eventually to raise over £11,000, completely various challenges with the help of friends.
As he continued: “We were invited down to the hopsital as a family, and they showed us a new state of the art incubator with the money we had raised.
“It was a great day and felt really good.”
With the pain and struggles, it was through raising the funds for the charity where he eventually found the charity StrongMen whilst planning to do the three-peak challenge.
He joined the StrongMen event called Weekenders, which the charity describes as a group of men that can relax and enjoy beautiful remote surroundings.
With the event providing men with opportunity to share their individual experiences with one another as they embrace the outdoors.
Joining the Weekender event in the summer of 2023, he spoke about the importance it has had on him, he said: “It’s a brotherhood of quiet, mutual understanding of grief, hurt and pain, that nobody ever wants to end up in.
“I was really surprised at how comforting it was, to meet strangers it was a good feeling of everyone knowing what you had been through without talking.”
The group who was meeting up regularly, organised the trip towards the end of last year, with the plan of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.
With the venturing group leaving in a few weeks, they have already raised £17,000 through the Strongmen JustGiving page.
The amazing effort of the group hasn’t gone unnoticed with CEO and Co-Founder of StrongMen, Efrem Brynin adding: “The funds will be used to help support our Weekenders through 2025.
“The support of the community through these events helps to sustain all the participants as we move forwards.”
As he continued to add: “Without this support men will suffer in silence.
“Grief can cause severe emotional and physical health conditions which are often overlooked and even ignored, especially in men.”
The team of 20 will attempt to summit the volcano, Mount Kilimanjaro with the event stretching from the Thursday 3 October until Saturday 12 October.
And with the charity offering support for men to reach out especially in times of grief, Efrem offered advice to those in need, saying: “Keep going, keep talking and reach out for specialist support when you need it.”
More information on the climb can be found through the link here.
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