#18. Haroon Mota: The Marathon Man

Haroon Mota is a fundraising manager for PennyAppeal, a charity which raises money for noteworthy causes. He is also the head of Challenges at PennyAppeal which means he cooks up some amazing ideas for charitable causes.

Haroon is known as the Marathon Man after he completed running a ‘4 marathons in 4 weeks’ challenge, dedicated to his father who died tragically in a car accident. The aim was to raise money for a solar water power centre in Africa which has since been successfully built.

To date, Haroon has raised over £1 million via many different challenges such as climbing to the Everest base camp, London marathon, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in Kenya, the Machu Picchu trail in Peru, Palestine Marathon and so much more!

Haroon talks about how he accidentally stumbled upon his current career choice whilst trekking Mount Snowdon in the UK and meeting a group of Muslim women hikers. He discusses how the act of doing good was instilled in him from a young age via the influence of his father and being sent to an Islamic boarding school to learn the Holy Quran. Today, Haroon dedicates his time in helping others fundraise for their charity campaigns and thinking up various unique challenges to push you through your limits.

On this episode we discuss the challenges of fundraising, motivations for overcoming barriers, how to get involved in charitable causes and so much more!

We really enjoyed talking with Haroon and being infected by his passion and enthusiasm for raising money for charities. So much so we ended up signing up for a few events in the process! Haroon is a real inspiration, he trains hard and works hard to raise money for noteworthy causes impacting Muslims around the world, he inspires others to take part in achieving their own goals as well as helping them raise money for charity. Haroon was recently presented with the ‘Good Citizen Award’ by his local Mayor, an award that he quite rightly deserves.