We are honoured to announce that Stephen Venables has become the first patron of Dreamcatcher Children's Charitable Fund....

ABOUT STEPHEN VENABLES

Stephen Venables, mountaineer, writer, broadcaster and public speaker, was
the first Briton to climb Everest without supplementary oxygen. He reached the
summit alone, after climbing with a small American-Canadian team, by a new route
up the gigantic Kangshung Face.

Everest was a thrilling highlight in a career which has taken Stephen right
through the Himalaya, from Afghanistan to Tibet, making first ascents of many
previously unknown mountains. His adventures have also taken him to the Rockies,
the Andes, the Antarctic island South Georgia, East Africa, South Africa and of
course the European Alps, where he has climbed and skied for over forty
years.

© Joe McGorty

The stories of these travels have enthralled Stephen’s lecture audiences in
theatres, schools and university clubs and at corporate conferences all over the
world. He has also appeared in television documentaries for BBC, ITV and
National Geographic, presented for Radio 4 and appeared in the IMAX movie
Shackleton’s Antarctic Adventure.

http://www.stephenvenables.com/about.asp

Stephen, his wife Rosie and son Edmond are no strangers to the adversity that families and their children sometimes have to experience and endure. Through great courage, care, tenacity and most of all love they did the best they could for their first son Ollie, a special child, who was diagnosed as autistic at two, found to have leukaemia a couple of years later, and who, after years of remission, was
then found to have a fatal brain tumour, and who died aged 12 in October 2003.

Stephen's Sunday Time bestseller book Ollie deals candidly with the effects of autism, illness and exhaustion on Ollie and his family, but it is also an inspiring, uplifting story