Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page. As many of you will have heard, I'm heading back to Sri Lanka to support one of my favourite Laureus projects: the Foundation of Goodness. But this time I'm taking my bike with me and cycling 500k in 5 days to raise money and this is where I need your help. We're cycling from the Seenigama programme in the South West to the new Manukulum project in the North. For those of you who are familiar with my cycling exploits, you might not think that this is too taxing for me. However, on this ride not only will I be carrying all of my own luggage myself (and I am also covering all my own costs so 100% of your funds will go to the project) but I am leaving my lovely carbon fibre racer at home and will be attempting this on my trusty ride around town hybrid, in 30C/86F humid weather, so even a cycling buff like me is going to find this tough.
For those of you who don't know, I spent 3 weeks volunteering at the Foundation of Goodness during the Christmas of 2009 / 10. I had the most incredible experience and feel very strongly about supporting the work that they do there. The project was originally set up to aid development in a rural community, providing the local people with the skills they need to create their own economy, helping to prevent them heading to the cities where they would almost inevitably have ended up in slum areas. However, their lives were blown apart by the 2004 Tsunami which completely devastated the area. Since then, with support from Laureus amongst others, they have rebuilt the area and as well as having an incredible sports complex for the kids with a top notch cricket pitch, swimming pool and not so top notch gravelly netball court, they have a medical centre, womens' enterprise area and IT and childcare facilities.
The South is now on its way, but it is the North project that really needs our help. The Foundation of Goodness are going to take their skills and expertise on rebuilding, to the area of Sri Lanka that has been completely devastated by 25 years of civil war. They don't just provide them with physical facilities, but use inter-village sports tournaments to help the communities themselves rebuild. There will be 3 of us riding (all girls) and our aim is to raise $20,000 to supply the community with 2000 bicycles as there is minimal transport infrastructure in the area and bikes are a great cheap, green and healthy way for them to get around, take goods to market, attend a job interview or just get to cricket practice. So please do support generously.
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Many thanks
Bex
http://www.unconditionalcompassion.org/sub/20110928_riding.php
