While most youngsters get their exercise from schoolyard football games, young Scott Guerini is slightly different.
The young boy has been fundraising for sick babies and children since the age of four, and he’s walked marathons in aid of them.
He began his walks for charity in 2010, when he was just four years old. Since then, he’s raised an astonishing €77K for the Australian charity event Telethon, which fundraises for sick children, according to Kidspot.
Scott explains that he has wanted to help sick children from a young age, saying: “I wanted to help the sick kids and babies, and the hardest thing I could think of doing was walking from my farmhouse in Southern Cross to the town, which was 25 kilometres away.”
When the youngster announced his plans to parents Nicole and Gary, they initially didn’t want him to do it.
“When Scott asked if he could walk to town, we said no,” Nicole recalls.
“We said it was too far, it was too hard, he was too little. But he asked every morning for two weeks, until we gave in, thinking he probably wouldn’t make it all the way anyway. But yeah, he surprised everyone!”
It took Scott eight hours and 14 minutes to complete the walk, and he raised over €2,000 on his first fundraising effort.
The little boy was bitten by the fundraising bug and began to partake in walking challenges every year. At seven years old, he walked 41 kilometres and then took on walking full marathons.
He even roped in younger brother Damien for one of the marathons.
“Damien was seven at the time,” their mum Nicole said, “And he says he’s not going to walk another marathon until he’s 21!
“Scott walked with Damian the whole way, although he slowed Scott down a little. We said to Scott, you can either slow down so that Damien can finish too, or you can speed up and try and beat last year’s time, because that’s always his goal.
“Scott said, ‘That’s OK, I’ll slow down and walk with Damien,’ so they finished together at 12-and-a-half hours.”
The young boy has ambitions of becoming a paediatric doctor in the future.
Last year, Scott completed his first international walk, hiking 82 kilometres along the Canadian Rockies, and he’s just written and illustrated his own book about changing the world.
The generous young boy will donate the profits of his book to Telethon. We think he is incredible – he has already done so much good in just 11 years of life.