Photojournalist Darrin Zammit Lupi and 20 other volunteers set off to Portugal on Friday morning to walk 115km, raising funds to help build a school in his daughter's memory. 

The group will be walking part of the famous Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route, as their key fundraising event. 

Rebecca Zammit Lupi was just 15 years old when she died of a rare cancer back in January 2021. Since then, her father has been raising funds to build a junior secondary school in Ethiopia in memory of Rebecca, also known as Becs.

“Personally, I collected over €56,000 myself, and works on the school have already begun,” Zammit Lupi told Times of Malta. 

The volunteers will be hiking for five days and cover a total of 115km. This will be the first time Zammit Lupi will be walking the ancient pilgrimage.

His initial attempt to do the Camino di Santiago was cut short by his daughter's illness: he had to pull out just a week after joining up after Rebecca was diagnosed with a one-in-a-million illness, Ewing's Sarcoma.

Monkey's dad, aka Darrin Zammit Lupi outside the airport on Friday. 'Monkey' was Zammit Lupi's nickname for Rebecca. Photo: Matthew Mirabelli

“This expedition is the climax of the fundraising activities we have to raise money for the school, and there will be another group who will be heading to Camino in September for the same cause.”

Zammit Lupi had previously said naming a school after Becs was ideal, being that she was an enthusiastic student and also campaigned for online education for sick children during her time in the Rainbow Ward at the hospital.

She had also developed an interest in the continent, which blossomed through her father’s work documenting the migration of Africans to Europe.

He said he hopes to travel to Ethiopia next January for the inauguration and opening of the school. 

The school will be built with funds raised through the SiGMA Foundation for a three-tier project, that will include a primary school, a kindergarten school, and a junior secondary school.

SiGMA Foundation chief philanthropy officer Keith Marshall, who is also joining Zammit Lupi for the pilgrimage, said the primary school is completed and the kindergarten school is being built. 

"The junior secondary school named after Becs is also being built and we are very close to reaching our target of €94,000. This expedition is the last push to raise all the funds," he told Times of Malta. 

Rebecca Zammit Lupi, whose memory has inspired the fundraising effort. Photo: Darrin Zammit Lupi

Taking to Facebook on Thursday night, Zammit Lupi recalled how back in 2005 he had set off for Kilimanjaro to raise funds for the building of an orphanage in Kenya. 

“My Becs was barely five months old when I set off for Kilimanjaro – she was with me all the way back then, a photo of her always in my pocket as I made my way to the summit,” he wrote.

"Bec, who’s still with me now, ever-present, always on my mind and never gone from my heart, who will in the coming days, surely be walking beside me, urging me on even when I’m too exhausted to put one foot in front of another.”

Donations can be made on the crowdfunding page https://gogetfunding.com/help-us-build-the-becs-zammit-lupi-secondary-school/