Raising money to ride to break the cycle

Hello everyone,

As some of you know I am going to bike ride 4000km across Europe this summer (from Amsterdam to Istanbul) with Global Agents for Change to raise money and awareness for micro credit.



One of my jobs for this trip is that I raise $4000 to contribute to the group fund and clearly I am going to need a little bit of help here. I know that $4000 seems like a lot of money at first, but I am always claiming that I know everyone worth knowing so this is a good way to put that to the test. If everyone I know is able to spare a little money to donate I would have no problem reaching my goal. Consider it a belated birthday present to me, except that you don’t need to worry about me wanting to take this gift back to the store.

I’m going to give everyone a link now where you can donate online (you can also give me cash or a cheque made out to Agents for Change).

Just hit the give now button and it will go to my fundraising efforts.

http://www.pincgiving.com/campaign/rtbtc_europe_rider__chris_walts

Also, please let me know if you do donate so I can send you a personal thank you note!

Now, for those detail orientated people, let me go into some of the specifics. Global Agents for Change is a group of social change catalysts that support sustainable solutions to global poverty and inspire youth to create a better world.

I personally have been working with them for about a year now helping out with various aspects of their communications committee (Check out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgglcT0iZOU).

One of Global Agents for Change’s big goals is to create the worlds biggest youth managed microcredit fund: they’ve raised over $91 000 already, and this tour and the Mexican one the total sure surpass $300 0000.

For those that don’t know, Micro credit is small trust based loans to the working poor. The reason this idea appeals to me is that it has a built in sustainability to it as once the loans are paid back the money can be put back into the system again. So a one time donation can continue to help people in need multiple times over.

As for the bike ride itself; the exact route is still being finalized but the totally distance will be about 4000km (basically riding from Vancouver to Toronto). Part of what I will be doing on this trip is hoping turn out fairly frequent written blogs (ideally about once every 3 days) as well as a video blog each week. If you want to keep track of our progress there should be lots of information being put up on the Global Agents for Change website as well as possibly on twitter through www.twitter.com/globalafc and www.twitter.com/chriswalts

I don’t want to write too much more as I feel like I am starting to ramble but please feel free to ask me whatever you want, I’d love to talk to anyone about it more!

Thank you again to everyone,
Chris