Extreme charity ride across Italy for Virgin's Branson

(ANSA) - Rome, September 19 - Billionaire British entrepreneur Richard Branson is cycling through the mountains and hills of Italy from the north to the south as part of the Big Change project, an idea that came from his children.
    "Holly and Sam," he told ANSA, "came to me with this idea.
    They wanted to see whether people and they themselves could push themselves beyond their own limits for an important cause. Since then, every two years we have been trying to organize a group of people and put them together in front of an extreme challenge." The Big Change project is used by Branson and his children to support alternative ways to help youths in their education for a future worthy of their talents.
    "This is an initiative that I, my brother Sam and a group of friends have put together to raise funds to help children grow and prepare for their futures not only through exams," Holly Branson said, "but by acting as incubators of their brilliant ideas and providing them with a series of contacts.
    "This year we are supporting a program that supports teachers and students to build their emotional intelligence, resilience and conflict management". As part of the Big Change project, this year Branson, his family and a group of 250 people are involved in the Virgin STRIVE Challenge 2016. They have ridden up mountains between Switzerland and Italy, covering over 100 miles per day and will in the next few days reach southern Italy. They will then swim to Sicily and run a marathon to Mount Etna.
    About 2,000 kilometers will be covered in a single month, double the last challenge in 2014, which raised over 750,000 pounds sterling.
    "We are exactly halfway," Branson said during a stop in Frascati. "We were in Tuscany until Saturday but we are not crossing through the city because we are going through the mountains". Those taking part "are exhausted", he said on Sunday, "last night there was a huge storm, a lot of lightening along the road and a great deal of flooding. We were told that we couldn't ride today, and we were relieved instead of sad".