The Power of the Paddle: One man’s mission to inspire hope through the spirit of adventure

‘His name was Ibrahim. He was about five years old and the thing he wanted most in the world was to go to school.’

In a tiny country on the Horn of Africa, extreme adventurer, former soldier and star of Channel 4’s Hunted Jordan Wylie made an extraordinary promise to a remarkable young boy. Ibrahim’s home Djibouti is a refuge from neighbouring war zones, laying host to children excluded from the basic privileges we take for granted in the West. So, armed with skills learned from a lifetime of adventures, Wylie vowed to raise funds to build a new school for those children.

And thus began a series of exceptional challenges, seeing Wylie row solo across the pirate-infested Bab el-Mandeb Strait in a world first and run extreme marathons in ice-cold climates. To cap it off, he embarked on a journey stand-up paddleboarding around mainland Great Britain, along the way facing military firing ranges, crazy teenagers on jet-skis, psychotic jellyfish and, finally, Covid-19.

This is the inspirational true story of the lengths one man went to fulfil a young boy’s dream - and of the good that can be achieved even in the hardest of times.