On your Bike for CAFOD
Monday 30th July 2018Today CAFOD workers, volunteers and our own Fr Chris Gorton are embarking on a 2 day, 81 mile bike ride across Kenya.
The team will ride from Nairobi to Embu, stopping at Mokuyu at the end of the first day.
Day 1 Nairobi to Mokuyu (66 km/41m)
Day 2 Mokuyu to Embu ((66 km/41m)
The ride is raising funds to support two projects in Kenya, that have a common link – bringing life-changing water and transformational renewable energy to two communities in Kenya :
- CAFOD’s ‘River Power Pod Africa Project’ in Embu
And
- a solar panel project for a community in Mokuyu, Kenya.
The team have set themselves a £ 4000 fundraising target with proceeds from this year’s ride divided evenly between the two projects.
You can see how empowering solar energy can be to be a community.
Steve Burrowes, CAFOD’s Community Participation Co-ordinator in Salford is one of the riders taking part. He will be joined by Fr Chris Gorton and Sean Desmond. They will also be joined by an ever growing band of Kenyan riders made up of CAFOD worker, volunteers and Salesians workers.
Steve said:
“The ride has been made possible by the wonderful support given to us by Salesian communities in Kenya and the UK, who are handling all the complex logistics of the ride – pick-ups, accommodation, support vehicles.
We, the UK riders cannot thank you enough and we hope that our efforts and all the donations we receive will help these projects realise their dreams to transform the lives of the people they serve – giving them the ‘power to be’.
With Sean being a Doctor and Fr Chris being a priest we’ve got both ends of the emergency spectrum covered !”
There were to be 4 UK riders but due to circumstances beyond his control the 4th rider, Tony Clarke, will not be able to join us. However, he will be riding the same distance – if not more – on the same days that we will be riding. Tony will be starting his ride from the CAFOD office in Chester
Saturday 28th – Chester to Colwn Bay
Sunday 29th – Colwyn Bay to Llandudno
Monday 30th – Return to New Brighton
Why are they riding?
With 1 in 6 people still live without electricity, the hopes of millions of the world’s children are all too often a distant dream – see CAFOD’s ‘Power To Be’ campaign
1 in 9 of the planet’s population lack access to clean, affordable water within half an hour of their homes, and every year nearly 300,000 children under five die of diarrhoea, linked to dirty water and poor sanitation – see CAFOD’s ‘Water Filter’ campaign
As a result of CAFOD’s ‘Power To Be’ campaign the World Bank have agreed to invest more of their funds into renewable energy projects, ceasing their investment in oil and gas based energy projects.
The campaign called on the World Bank, to shift the balance to support renewable energy which tackles poverty, so everyone can have the chance to fulfil their potential.
In addition to the ride Thornleigh Salesian College’s ‘Mama Margaret’s’ project kindly supported by getting students from Mokuyu school into a recording studio to record their take on ‘It’s about time’, which had been shared with them by ‘Safe Ambition’, Gorton, Manchester.
The song and the young people from Mokuyu and Gorton sum up what the ride is all about – the changes we all need to make in how we treat ‘our common home’, for the benefit of future generations.
You can support the project here and follow its progress on facebook.
