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By participating in the Plymouth-Dakar challenge, we hope to live a great adventure, crossing countries where we've never been before, with a 35 years old car, obviously not designed for crossing the desert... But this is not just another travel experience. Otherwise we could just buy any package tour. It's true we enjoy traveling and love a challenging adventure. But for that purpose we could also had book any of the many available adventure trips.
So, what makes this travel different?!?
We really aim to help those must in need. And we've found a way of doing it by contributing with one of our best tested skills: travelling! To keep it short let’s present you our chosen charity organizations and how we aim to help them.
In Gambia: When we arrive in Banjul we will offer our car to the organization of the event, which will auction it for charity, selling the car to the Gambian people. The money raised with the auction will be distributed to local organizations, with a real impact in the life of local communities. In 2008 the car auctions raised £66,968 for charity and the 2009 auctions in Banjul should raise a similar sum.
At the heart of the Gambian end of the Challenge there are two organisations working very closely together. The first is the Association of Small-Scale Enterprises in Tourism (ASSET). The second is the Gambian National Olympic Committee (GNOC).
ASSET operates, as its name implies, in the tourism industry. But it is as far away from the activities of the big tour companies as can be imagined. ASSET was set up to help thousands of Gambians to scoop up more of the crumbs from the tourism table and, as one member said, to 'give a voice to the voiceless'. So it lobbies government to do more for the juice pressers, the fruit sellers, the tourist taxi drivers, the official tourist guides and people with many similar jobs, all of whom struggle to gain access to the tourists who are managed by the tour operators and the bigger ground operating companies.
By contrast the GNOC is about making things work for the country's sports persons. There is huge interest and participation in sport in Gambia. There is a huge numbers of 'football pitches' - patches of bare sand - at least one in every village. Very few people can afford the kit that enables kids to practise sport in Gambia. The GNOC struggles hard in these circumstances to offer a variety of sporting activities and to build stadia around the country.
In Portugal, on top of giving our car to be auctioned for charity in The Gambia, we’ve decided to also help a local cause in Portugal. After some initial brainstorming on witch association to help, we've been presented to Terra dos Sonhos, and didn’t take us more than 1 minute to elect them as our supported cause.
We invite you to visit their websites and join us helping raising money for supporting these causes. We have no material interests in this and can assure you that most of the raised funds will go directed to theirs hands. A very small marginal part would be helping us with the logistics in order to make this project possible.
You do have a lot of secure ways to contribute. In the name of these institutions: our sincere THANK YOU.
So, what makes this travel different?!?
We really aim to help those must in need. And we've found a way of doing it by contributing with one of our best tested skills: travelling! To keep it short let’s present you our chosen charity organizations and how we aim to help them.
In Gambia: When we arrive in Banjul we will offer our car to the organization of the event, which will auction it for charity, selling the car to the Gambian people. The money raised with the auction will be distributed to local organizations, with a real impact in the life of local communities. In 2008 the car auctions raised £66,968 for charity and the 2009 auctions in Banjul should raise a similar sum.
At the heart of the Gambian end of the Challenge there are two organisations working very closely together. The first is the Association of Small-Scale Enterprises in Tourism (ASSET). The second is the Gambian National Olympic Committee (GNOC).
ASSET operates, as its name implies, in the tourism industry. But it is as far away from the activities of the big tour companies as can be imagined. ASSET was set up to help thousands of Gambians to scoop up more of the crumbs from the tourism table and, as one member said, to 'give a voice to the voiceless'. So it lobbies government to do more for the juice pressers, the fruit sellers, the tourist taxi drivers, the official tourist guides and people with many similar jobs, all of whom struggle to gain access to the tourists who are managed by the tour operators and the bigger ground operating companies.
By contrast the GNOC is about making things work for the country's sports persons. There is huge interest and participation in sport in Gambia. There is a huge numbers of 'football pitches' - patches of bare sand - at least one in every village. Very few people can afford the kit that enables kids to practise sport in Gambia. The GNOC struggles hard in these circumstances to offer a variety of sporting activities and to build stadia around the country.
In Portugal, on top of giving our car to be auctioned for charity in The Gambia, we’ve decided to also help a local cause in Portugal. After some initial brainstorming on witch association to help, we've been presented to Terra dos Sonhos, and didn’t take us more than 1 minute to elect them as our supported cause.
We invite you to visit their websites and join us helping raising money for supporting these causes. We have no material interests in this and can assure you that most of the raised funds will go directed to theirs hands. A very small marginal part would be helping us with the logistics in order to make this project possible.
You do have a lot of secure ways to contribute. In the name of these institutions: our sincere THANK YOU.
Terra dos Sonhos is a Portuguese NGO dedicated to make dreams happen for children and teenagers diagnosed with a chronic disease and/or in a terminal disease stage. They really do a brilliant job and touch the heart of many children and families. They believe (and so we do!) in the power of the small unique moments as a way of improving the quality of life of the children, teenagers and their families (and even helping them getting better).
