Step up: Join the Hamlin Barefoot Walk
July 14, 2025
Challenge your school, university or club to take on the Hamlin Barefoot Walk.
Every step and every dollar counts when it comes to changing women’s lives. By taking part in the Hamlin Barefoot Walk, as a school charity fundraiser event, university activity or club event, you will step up to make a big difference.
This September, will you get a team together to raise funds to cover the cost of life-changing surgery for an Ethiopian woman living with the devastating effects of obstetric fistula?
Why it matters?
The Hamlin Barefoot Walk is more than a physical challenge - it’s a movement of compassion.
Every year, around 1,000 women in Ethiopia sustain a horrific obstetric fistula injury. 90% also lose their baby. The good news is that, in most cases, an obstetric fistula can be repaired with a single life-changing surgery lasting no more than two hours.
By joining the Hamlin Barefoot Walk, you and your school fundraising efforts will be helping restore women’s health, dignity, hope and independence.
How to get involved
Whether you're a school class, a sports club, or a community group, getting involved is simple:
Sign up
Register, come up with a team name and set your team’s distance and fundraising goals (aim high but we would ask your team to collectively walk a minimum of 25km during September)
Raise funds
Invite your team mates to join the team and set their own distance and fundraising goals (their kms and fundraising will be added to the team total). Encourage them to share their walk with everyone they know via social media, email or word of mouth to help raise a team total of $1,500, the cost of one woman’s fistula repair surgery)
Do it for her
Your team will do the Hamlin Barefoot Walk during September and walk in solidarity with Ethiopian women.
Ready to Walk?
Toe-gether, put your best foot forward and help change the life of a woman suffering from horrific childbirth injuries in Ethiopia.
Footwear is optional but it’s called a challenge for a reason. Walking barefoot reflects the experience of women in rural Ethiopia who walk, often barefoot over difficult terrain, for an average of 25km to reach medical care. Give it a go and have a toe-riffic time doing it!
Be sure to check these out too:
Best Sydney Walks
Best Melbourne Walks
Catherine Hamlin Fistula Foundation acknowledges the Traditional Owners and Elders past, present and emerging throughout Australia and the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, the Traditional Owners of the land and waterways on which our Australian office is situated. We acknowledge the many ethnic groups in Ethiopia and their ancestral and cultural connection to the land where our work is undertaken.