On April 13, Geordie Wardman will tackle a 100-mile race across the Utah desert.

He is doing it in hopes of raising $100,000 to start a charity in memory of his son Finn, who died in a tragic accident last year.

The 20-year-old, who was studying business administration at Durham University in Britain, was “passionate about travel and adventure”.

The loss has been tremendous for Mr Wardman, his wife, Kirsten, their son, Somers, extended family members and friends.

“It has been the worst year of our lives, and the devastating effects on our family is something we will have to live with for ever,” he said.

“We’re trying to realise that and live as much in the present moment as we can, find joy in what we can each day and not dwell so much on the past, honouring the death of [Finn] in the proper way.”

The Finn Wardman Culture & Diversity Scholarship offers students in Bermuda and Mexico who want to travel, but don’t have the means, the opportunity to take a gap year “before, in between or after their studies”.

Students do not have to be following the typical academic path to apply.

The best candidate will be someone who has thought about how a year abroad can enhance their studies, who has taken the time to learn about other cultures and has “a solid plan to subsidise their own travels”.

Mr Wardman has already seen the impact it can have. The family lived in Mexico for a while where they met Osmar Lopez Guerrero, a young boy who had never travelled out of his town and “was like a brother” to Finn.

Trips with the Wardmans opened his eyes to the wider world: he is now making his way as a model and a surfer in Hawaii.

“There's plenty of scholarships to help get them to go to university — and I think those are great — but I feel, since this is in the spirit of my son, I want to do something that's more like an adventure, a once-in-a-lifetime,” said Mr Wardman, who has partnered with the Ministry of Education and Bermuda Scholarships.

He has run ultra marathons of 50 miles a handful of times. At the end of his last race he vowed “never again”.

After his son died, however, the idea of tackling something “really big and scary” seemed an appropriate way to pay tribute to someone he’d loved so much.

He shared the idea with Chase Toogood, an old friend from Bermuda.

“My friend had never done anything like this either. I don't think he’d run more than the half marathon on May 24th but immediately he said, ‘I'll do it with you’,” said Mr Wardman, a Bermudian software developer and entrepreneur who left the island in 2010.

On April 8, Finn was with his family in St Legier, Switzerland, while on a break from university and went off to meet classmates from his high school, about an hour away.

He and his best friend took a train ride back. “From what I understand it was a dark station and he was walking along the track at night and didn't realise the track curved and he slipped off in between the tracks,” his father said.

“It was just a terrible accident, nobody's fault. His best friend who was with him is devastated and all his mates at school and his grandmothers and his brother and, obviously, his mother.”

Family and friends from Bermuda and the US travelled to Switzerland for the funeral service.

“That was a huge help to get us through that initial week where there’s this massive loss, where you’re just so shocked, in disbelief.

“And then after that, we kind of crawled back into our home and didn’t leave for about two months. It was what I would call as deep a depression as I’ve ever been in in my life.”

Mr Wardman lost interest in everything. Eye-movement desensitisation and reprocessing therapy sessions helped, but it was only after a spiritual trip to India, that included ten days’ silent meditation, that he was able to come to grips with what had taken place.

“Those first three days, basically all I did was relive his death and that awful experience — the night that his friend called us and said that he’d been hit by the train.

“He was still alive at that point and we had to drive [to him]. So reliving all these very gruesome details … meditation really kind of helped me.

“I don't know if I really know how to describe it, but I would say it kind of crossed a line where I can actually just accept it.

“I was able to try to focus a bit more, work on things. And that's about the time that I came up with this charity initiative.”

To help bring Finn alive for others, he wrote a song, I’ll Be Running For You, with a Malawi reggae singer, Zion the Messenger, and set it to videos of his son.

“I couldn’t even look at videos of him before that. It was tough and it is tough. It’s not five minutes that doesn't go by where I’m not thinking about it,” Mr Wardman said.

The 55-year-old only started training last week. His plan was “just to run”, initially for an hour a day each week with five or six-hour runs each weekend.

“It’s not something you can really prepare for. It’s not like I’m going to go out and run for 20 hours a month before the race because I’ll be wrecked.

“But I do need to go out and do something — my body will have to be able to take the pounding. But it’s gonna be a pretty minimalist training schedule, unfortunately.”

Being in the Swiss mountains in the middle of winter is also working against training.

“There’s no place really to run here. So I have to run in the snow or I have to take a train to somewhere where there's no snow and that's unrealistic because I’m still working. So I just run in the snow basically.

“I know my determination is going to be enough. My brother is going to be there and he’s said he’ll help carry me across the last 25 miles [if I need it],” he joked.

“[Chase] is probably going to be miles ahead because he’s very smart and he started training in April, basically right away, and he ran a 50-mile in September.

“So he’s been running and he's pretty athletic so I’m going to be hours behind him but I’m pretty determined to get across the finish line.

“If it takes me three hours or 30 hours and I’m walking, hobbling, crawling ... that's what I’m gonna be doing.”

The $100,000 Mr Wardman hopes to raise through a GoFundMe page is only the first milestone. His plan is to grow the scholarship and offer it to more countries.

“It could be dozens of children each year getting scholarships — that would be the end goal.”

To do that however, he needs help.

“People don’t need to feel, ‘I only can do $20. That’s fine. Twenty dollars is great. And if you can’t do that, just share it. If they share it to their network and between their network, if they can raise $50, it all helps.”

• For more information visitfinnwardman.com. Individuals and corporations can donate to the Finn Wardman Culture & Diversity Scholarship through GoFundMe atwww.gofundme.com/f/finn-wardman-charity