Church caretaker Ian Devlin has managed to raise £37,000 for an East End school for kids with learning difficulties—but had to climb a mountain to do it.

Ian and a team of volunteers from Bow Methodist Church and Friends of Ian Mikardo High School are back home after topping Tanzania’s Kilimanjaro, the highest peak in Africa, in a sponsored charity climb.

The summit is 19,341ft above sea level and climbers often have to use oxygen masks in the thinning atmosphere.

But it was enough to raise funds for extra facilities for the children who have severe and complex social, emotional and behavioural difficulties. The youngsters, many excluded from other schools, get minute-by-minute support in a new purpose-built complex in Bromley-by-Bow.