Charity vision inspired by brush with death.

It is a big plan for a 24-year-old record producer who has never actually visited Africa. But Simon believes in aiming high and thinking big.

"This is a long-term project, but it has got to be done. You cannot keep pumping aid into a country, you have to do something like this."

Simon got the idea for his One Million project which launches on Monday after talking to a friend who works for Save the Children. He has spent the last two years coming up with the campaign which aims to build and support hospitals across rural Africa, as well as providing mobile healthcare for people in outlying villages.

"Philanthropy is not dead and this is just too important to ignore."

"We are going to start in Kenya. We will go into that community and work with the people there to try and develop a long-term healthcare solution."

Simon owns a record label called Blue Gull Records, and has teamed up with Leeds singer Abbe Smith, who will donate all profits from the first week's sales of her upcoming album What is Real, released on Monday.

He is urging the public to donate via the charity's website during the same week to raise as much money as possible to get his charity off the ground.

Simon believes his drive to help others was fuelled by a near-death experience when he was eight years old.

While he was out shopping with his parents, teenager Robert Devonshire dropped a 13lb scaffolding pole on to Simon from the top of the car park at the Ridings Shopping Centre in Wakefield.

"The scaffolding hit me on the back of the head, fracturing my skull; my parents were told that I would not survive and if I

did I would be badly brain- damaged. I remember going shopping with my family, but nothing about what happened."

After spending weeks in an induced coma, Simon did wake and, although he had to learn to walk again and his memory is not as good as it should be for someone of his age, he did not suffer the predicted brain damage.

Robert Devonshire was sentenced to four years in September 1995 for the attack but was released the following year. Three months later, Devonshire dropped a lump of concrete on to a 64-year-old man from the top of the same multi-storey car park. He was given two life sentences for the attack.

Simon says: "My past is a very important part of who I am. It's made me very appreciative of what I have. If I am having a bad day, I think that I am just lucky to be here. People see it as a bad thing that happened to me, but it is so much of what

I am and what I do is down to that day.

"For a long time I ran away from it. Every one knew what had happened to me and it made me uncomfortable."

Simon now hopes that by telling his story it will help raise money for his Global Health Campaign.

n For more information

on the campaign, visit www. globalhealthcampaign.com