In 2013, Arnd Zabka, Senior Business Manager at Altran, qualified for the Ironman on Hawaii. „I have dreamed to participate at the Ironman since 25 years. When you are that lucky you need to give something back“, says Arnd Zabka. And thus the idea of a charity marathon was born among the colleagues: For each of the 226 kilometres of the Ironman the employees could obtain sponsorship by donating. Arnd Zabka quickly decided for a suitable organisation. An eleven year old girl in his sports club was diagnosed with leukaemia. She could find a donator via the DKMS and was healed. „Her optimism impressed me a lot, therefore I decided to support the DKMS“, explains the Senior Business Manager.
On October 12th 2013 Arnd Zabka started in Kailua Kona on Hawaii and completed the 3.8 km swimming, 180 km cycling and the marathon in 13 hours, 16 minutes and 54 seconds. „The thought about the good purpose and the support of the colleagues helped me to meet this challenge“, expressed Arnd Zabka looking back. Overall the colleagues collected 2,500 €. The management who was really impressed by the employees‘ initiative and doubled the amount. Aline Vogel, who is responsible for fundraising at the DKMS received the donation and commented: „It does not happen very often that employees and management organise such a fundraising campaign. Therefore we are very happy about the donation and really appreciate this initiative of Altran.“
The donation is exclusively used for type testing. With this amount 100 donators can by tested. Laboratory costs for one typification are 50€ which are not covered by the health insurances. The donation helped to again increase the donators’ database, currently providing over 4.2 million donators.
