From conquering Kilimanjaro and completing an ultra marathon, to winning multiple international awards and being the co-founder of an organisation, The Chaeli Campaign, a campaign benefiting 7000 disabled people a year, this is all in a day’s work for Michaela Mycroft – and she does it all from a wheelchair.
Chaeli is setting out to defeat the odds once more by climbing Lion’s Head on the 19th of July, 10am, and she needs your help to do it. Join Chaeli in making history by helping her reach the top of Lion’s Head and conquer something amazing once more! Find out more here.
Who is Michaela Mycroft?
Born 30 August 1994, Michaela is a South African ability activist with cerebral palsy who founded The Chaeli Campaign with her four sisters in 2004 to raise funds for her motorised wheelchair. The organisation now runs seven programs that benefit the lives of over 7000 disabled people every year. She also won the Intenational Children’s Peace Prize in 2011, presented to her by Nobel Peace Laureate, Mairead Maguire.
In 2015, at age 21, Chaeli became the first female quadriplegic to summit the highest mountain in Africa, Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, where she celebrated her birthday. She made history once again when she became one of the first wheelchair athletes to complete the Comrades Marathon, an 89-kilometre ultramarathon which runs between Pietermaritzburg and Durban. For the first time in the event’s 95-year history, a wheelchair athlete had successfully lobbied the organisers to have the rules changed, that had previously not allowed wheelchair athletes from participating.
Michaela is a role model for the youth of South Africa and around the world – and Cape Town is ready to support her as she tackles the Mother City’s nature gem, Lions Head, this winter.
Photography The Chaeli Campaign, The Legacy Project