Peter McCloy Commences Trek For Girls Fundraiser

Patient Zero • October 2, 2019

Peter McCloy, Principal Program Manager at Patient Zero has headed off to Peru for his "Trek For Girls" fundraiser. He is taking part in Plan International Australia's Trek for Girls Programme to raise much needed funds to help get young girls educated and out of harm's way. 


Peter says “Plan International works to empower girls around the world, it’s really important, and I want to do what I can to help. This will be a challenging trek, but no more challenging than what young girls face.”


The “Trek For Girls” 2019 will see Peter traverse along the legendary Inca Trail from the sacred Urubamba River to Machu Picchu. It will take 5 days and he will reach an altitude of 13,828 feet (4,213m). Already, he is facing the reality of high altitude “Settling in after suffering altitude sickness. Travel in Peru is a reminder of how privileged we are in Australia, how safe our children are growing up” Peter said. 


Plan International Australia is a global independent development and humanitarian organisation, that recognise the power and potential of every single child. Yet poverty, violence, exclusion and discrimination strip them of their childhoods, and it is girls who are most affected. They work alongside children, young people, supporters and partners to tackle the root causes of the injustices facing girls and the most marginalised children.


Peter’s fundraising goal is $3,500 and will contribute to Plan International’s $50,000 target for the Trek For Girls program. He is proud to support one of the oldest, largest and most experienced organisations in their field. “This year they launched their Half A Billion Reasons Report which shows how investing in girls can change the world.” Peter said. 


Half a billion adolescent girls in the developing world are our next generation of leaders, workers and mothers. What opportunities they have, what barriers they face and what they achieve today will set them on a life course that will not only determine their futures, but the future of their families, their communities and their nations.


Patient Zero’s CEO Paul Briggs, says that Peter embodies Patient Zeros’ mission. “Our mission is seeing further, taking you there. Peter is definitely seeing further than most. We wish him all the best on this adventure”. 


To support Peter and Plan International Australia “Trek For Girls Programme” you can donate at 

https://donate.grassrootz.com/planaustralia/trek-for-girls-peru-2019/peters-trek-for-girls  

All donations over $2 are tax deductible. 

Share This Post

Get In Touch

Recent Posts

May 20, 2025
We’re proud to announce that Hanieh Madad has been named the winner of the Technical Award at the prestigious 2025 ARN Women in ICT Awards.
Copies of the book DesignedUp are stacked on top of each other on a pink background
By Lennah kuskoff May 5, 2025
At PZ, we’re always exploring how design and technology can better complement each other. We recently hosted a Lunch & Learn featuring Emma Carter, Experience Design Leader and author of DesignedUp, whose talk was a candid, experience-rich exploration of what it takes to create great products, and even better collaboration between disciplines.
By Joe Cooney May 5, 2025
A friend and former colleague reached out to me recently to ask if I could help him fix a couple of bugs in a small project he’d been working on. He was not a developer, but had worked in and around developers for his whole 20+ year career as a business analyst, product owner and program manager. With the advent of tools like Cursor and Lovable his lack of coding ability was (maybe) no longer a barrier to getting some ideas he’d been incubating in his mind for a while, out into the world. With credit card in hand, he dived headfirst into the world of “vibe” coding. We met for coffee, and he showed me the prototype he’d built. I was quite impressed with what he showed me (running on his laptop…deploying it anywhere was a bridge he had not crossed yet) – a capable working prototype that demonstrated the ideas he was trying to prove out. I asked him about the “development experience” and he said it had been great at first, and he’d been able to make a lot of progress quickly, but at some point he hit a bit of a wall where each change he tried to make introduced more issues, and he felt like it was pointless to continue. He’d switched between a few different AI coding tools in an effort to see if the problems he encountered were specific to the tool he’d started with, but without success. The vibes had run out.
By Joe Cooney April 3, 2025
Making cybersecurity fun and engaging with capture-the-flag (CTF) events—boost team collaboration, enhance security skills, and turn dry security practices into an exciting challenge!
More Posts