My charity and new fundraising page

G’day folks,

I have been busy of late setting up my fundraising page for my expedition charity. Click here and check it. And of course donate some money, I guarantee it will make you sleep better if you donate, probably even make you look more beautiful and you will have firm, toned abdominals in just 2 weeks! Guaranteed!

All donations go directly to my expedition charity, Bicycles for Humanity and not to my African beer drinking fund. Although if you want to donate to my Africa beer drinking fund I can send you my account details – ummm cycling long distances and drinking beer I’m not sure if they go together but I suppose I will find out.

I have set myself the goal to raise the $12,000 transportation cost of the sea container. At this point with the grand total of $0 raised that seems a long way away, but I have a plan to get into the schools here in Melbourne, speak at their assemblies and hopefully get the schools to help create some fundraising projects.

If you want to help out, get your workmates to donate or organisation than please contact me. We can even get you hooked up with your own team member fundraising page where all the donations you raise go directly to the final continent expedition’s $12,000 goal.

Below I have copy and pasted in my charity page from under the final continent section of my blog. If I must say so myself it does a great job in showing what both Bicycles for Humanity and the Bicycle Empowerment Network, Namibia (who I will be working with once in Africa) actually do. Plus there are 3 video for you to watch, well worth a gander.

Happy reading and donating, and remember EVERY LITTLE BIT COUNTS

For my cycling expedition I’m teaming up with the Melbourne chapter of Bicycles for Humanity who work with the Bicycle Empowerment Network (BEN) Namibia.

Basically what Bicycles for Humanity does is gets an empty sea container and fills it with disused bikes. These are bikes that people donate for many reasons, mainly because it is a great use for a bike that has been sitting out in the shed collecting dust.

Then the sea container is sent from Melbourne to the Bicycle Empowerment Network (BEN) that has their headquarters in Namibia. Using their local knowledge and infrastructure BEN allocates the container to a local community in need of bicycles to bridge the gap to health care and education facilities.

BEN turns the container into a Bicycle Empowerment Centre (bike workshop). Locals are employed and trained in bicycle mechanics and how to run the bike work shop. Profits from the workshop go to paying the local employees and the ongoing running costs of the workshop. This is what I love about this charity! Bikes are not just given to the locals and then forgotten about. The work shop is set up as an ongoing self sustainable business, by locals for the locals

So who get’s the bikes? Ozzie founder Michael Linke first established BEN Namibia to meet the need of 700 local HIV/AID volunteers who visit people living with HIV/AIDS in their homes, delivering counseling and medical and sanitary supplies. Most of these volunteers walked long distances, so Michael’s original idea was to help them get bikes. Nowadays BEN also supplies bikes to other community members to help make health and educational facilities more accessible. Check out the news clip below for a better idea.

So how did I end up hooking up with bicycles for humanities? It all started with one of my blog reader’s Kate who I volunteered with at the Orphanage in Mexico back in 2007. She knew I was going to Africa to volunteer and had seen bicycles for humanity on TV and had thought of me as they had a chapter in Melbourne. I then met up with Matt the founder of the Melbourne chapter for coffee and planted the seed of my expedition with him. He loved it and was keen to team up. So keep watching this space and we will see what kind of tree this seed grows.

Below is a video featuring Matt at the 2009 Melbourne bicycle drop