The Kilimanjaro Challenge Team today made their way to Tanzania, Africa, to venture the slopes of the highest free-standing mountain on the planet, Kilimanjaro, as the eleventh team to take on the annual challenge.

This year's team, made up of 18 people of a variety of age groups, will be climbing the mountain for six days, until they reach Mount Kilimanjaro's summit. It will then take them another two days to climb back down.

Throughout the year, the team has successfully manage to collect €75,000 between them to build a Kindergarten School in Wush Wush, Ethiopia.

Alexandra Manche, one of the participants taking on this year's challenge, told The Malta Independent that everyone has their own reasons to be taking on this mountain. "For some it's for a sense of direction, for others it is about the challenge," she said.

The team started their training in March, nine months prior to the actual climb. The training included a long hike every Sunday, without fail, as well as arduous hill climbs a few months in, and frequent individual gym training.

After the mountain expedition, the team will be traveling to Wush Wush to inaugurate the project.

"We are physically trained," said Alexandra, "but I feel it will be more of a mental challenge rather than a physical one."  "And you cannot really train for the lack of oxygen you are going to experience at the top of the mountain," she said.

Since the beginning of the Kilimanjaro Challenge Team, more than €650,000 has been collected and invested in the construction of a school and a convent in a village called Bulbula, in Ethiopia. A wing for a 3-in-1 project, as well as a house hosting 100 physically disabled, deaf and blind children in Kenya, a clinic in Sakko and Kindergarten Schools in Gambela, Dembidolo and Jemu, all of which are in Ethiopia.

Through Kilimanjaro Challenge 11 (KC11), the team collected money to support a project recently undertaken by the Moviment Missjunarju Gesù fil-Proxxmu.

Mount Kilimanjaro is a dormant volcano in Tanzania, East Africa. It is almost six kilometers above sea level. There are different trekking routes which one can take to climb the mountain.