It was possibly the most haunting scene in the hit TV show Race Across the World.
Emon Choudhury and his nephew Jamiul had been having a ball in South America when they were confronted with the desperate plight of street children.
That moment focussed their minds on winning the £20,000 prize money in order to help the homeless children they had met.
And for Bradford businessman Emon, now 40, it was a life-changing experience. Since the show in 2020 he has thrown himself into raising money for good causes.
Emon, who lives in Saltaire and who owns Easycare, off Wakefield Road, in Bradford, had the travel bug since spending time in Africa when he was a student. And he jumped at the chance to take part in the BBC 2 show.
“They didn’t tell us where we would start or finish. They just said the concept of the show is you’ve got to get from A to B with no money, and no phone. And that’s it really. I just thought I would give it a bash – and what an experience that was.”
He enjoyed lots of highlights on his journey – but the best bit for him was right at the end.
“Obviously we won the show and then we gave money away to the kids that we met on the streets. And to see their faces, to see what that money meant to them was so fulfilling.
“£20,000, don’t get me wrong, it’s a lot of money – but it’s not a lot of money if you know what I mean. You can probably buy a car or a new kitchen. But in Sao Paulo in Brazil £20,000 goes such a long way. It can change lives.
“I know that money went to good use to help a lot of kids get off the street and things like that. So that was the most fulfilling part of the whole journey.”
After winning the race Emon and Jamiul returned to find the children they had met along the way. They gave some money to them and also to a charity called Sao Martinho, which is based in Sao Paulo. The charity, which Emon has stayed in touch with, has a project that takes children off the streets into education or into foster homes.
“We were meant to give away half of the money,” he said. “But we ended up giving it all.
“I think people that watch the show will realise the first couple of weeks me and my nephew were just there having a party. We were spending money left, right and centre and we weren’t really concentrating on the race – but when we came across those kids that changed everything for us. We knew how much it meant to them. So we sat down and said ‘listen let’s pull our socks up, let’s do this for the kids’.
“Even if we didn’t win, I would happily have supported them as well – so either way they would have got something out of it. But fortunately, we won it and then we gave all the money away.”
In the show Emon and Jamiul are pictured suddenly catching sight of the children sleeping rough on the streets.
But he revealed they had actually met them the night before – without realising how destitute they were.
He said: “Me and my nephew – a lot of the times we were sleeping rough as well and we found this shelter. Like a bus stop stroke shelter.
“We were getting comfy for the night and these kids came over. I didn’t know who these kids were. They just came over and said ‘are you guys all right? You’re not from round here’. They offered us bananas and apples. I happily took them because I didn’t know they were homeless. I said ‘I don’t have any money to pay you’ and they were like ‘you don’t need to pay me, pay later’.
“The next morning we woke up early and walked down the street a little bit. And there was another shelter in front of ours. I had a look in that shelter and it was all those kids that I’d seen the night before. And then I walked a bit more and there were some more kids in a shelter. I recognized a couple of the kids who gave me a banana and I felt so bad – taking food from homeless kids.
“That’s what killed me the most. Obviously they don’t have anything to give but they ended up giving it to us anyway.
“That day I made a promise to them that when we’ve done this race we’ll come back and help you guys.”
That experience inspired him to keep helping good causes – and he has now helped numerous charities, raising around £150,000.
“Once you see something you can’t unsee it, and my life has changed since then,” he said.
”Obviously Race across the World got us a lot of publicity and my following on social media grew a lot. So I used that platform to raise awareness, and raise money for different causes, different charities.
“If I can help in any way then I will. Any charity that approaches me saying ‘can you do this or can you do that’ I will always say yes to them.”
The many charities he has helped include the MND Association in West Yorkshire, Epilepsy Action, and Bradford-based Orphans in Need. He said business has now taken a back seat while he focuses on more important charity work.
“But fortunately I’ve built the business up and it runs by itself, I’ve got good staff that work there that look after my interests,” he said.
It’s quite a change for Emon who has been a keen entrepreneur ever since he was a primary school boy growing up in Manchester where his dad owned a restaurant.
He began earning money by taking sweets and soft drinks from the restaurant to sell at school. His next venture was a paper round when he was about 10 – progressing to taking on more rounds and delegating them to his friends
At the age of 16 he managed to get a market stall, despite being officially too young. He used to visit the wholesalers in his school uniform and buy job lots of whatever was going.
“I didn’t drive either so I would take two big suitcases, fill my two big suitcases up and get the bus to the market and sell my stuff,” he said.
As a student at Sheffield University, he had other money-making schemes – including a minibus service for nights out.
Another project, making and selling car mats, laid the path for his financial future.
Initially he dabbled at buying and selling cars and when he sold on a BMW he forgot to include the car mats. He put them on ebay and was amazed to get £55 for them. Because of the amount of interest, he started making car mats himself and was soon earning a healthy profit.
“It really took off. So now I’ve got a 12,000 ft unit in Bradford where we manufacture car mats. Obviously, I don’t make them now myself, we’ve got an automated machine that makes them,” he said.
He has also diversified his products to include accessories such as car oil, and number plates, as well as household carpets.
With his focus on fundraising in recent years he often takes part in running events, such as half marathons and marathons.
He is planning to run the London Marathon this year and is also looking into the possibility of rowing the Atlantic.
Another big focus in his life is his two-year-old daughter Lilly – and she often joins him on his training.
“I started buggy running. It was always a thing before but I’ve never really looked into it. Since I’ve had her I’ve been training for a lot of marathons and what have you and I do a lot of my training runs with her in a buggy. I started this craze in my local park, Roberts Park, of buggy running.
“Obviously I had to buy a special buggy for it. It’s an all-terrain, all-singing and all dancing buggy. I like to go at a decent speed – and she loves every second of it.”
