Hello everyone,

Thank you so much for taking the time to have a look at our page. We are raising money in support of the important work that is done by the White Helmets in Syria.

Since the conflict erupted in March 2011, Syria has witnessed unprecedented devastation and displacement. More than 5 million Syrians have fled the country and 6 million are internally displaced. With more than 13 million people in need of assistance, the conflict has caused untold suffering for Syrian men, women and children. More than 13 million people inside Syria require humanitarian assistance, including nearly 6 million children. At the end of 2017, more than half the country’s hospitals, clinics and primary health care centres were only partially functioning or had been damaged beyond repair.

The White Helmets, officially known as Syria Civil Defence, is a volunteer organisation that operates in parts of rebel-controlled Syria and in Turkey. The majority of their activity in Syria consists of urban search and rescue in response to bombing, medical evacuation, evacuation of civilians from danger areas, and essential service delivery. As of April 2018, the organisation claims to have saved over 114,000 lives and to have lost the lives of 204 White Helmet volunteers in the process. If you want to learn more about who they are and what they do, visit their homepage The White Helmets or watch the Netflix documentary (extremely heratbreaking).

We are challenging ourselves and will be going on a family bike tour in July 2018 from the UK to France and back to raise funds for an organisation that does essential work in a situation which has been described by the UN as too horrific to be put in words.

We will be travelling the estimated 125 miles entirely by bike with two infants under 3 on one cargo bike and one normal bike with a trailer. We will be documenting our journey on here and on Instagram through the account @song.of.the.universe or under the hashtag #familytourdefrance. This is the intended route:

This is the Taga 2.0 cargo bike, which we will be travelling with, with our two monkeys:

Thank you for taking the time to read this, your donations are hugely appreciated.

Lots of love from Yuge, James and the two monkeys