CYCLING FOR EDUCATION
Education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world. – Nelson Mandela
Cycling for personal enrichment is one thing. It gets even better if you can cycle for others.
By sharing the beauty of the earth and people, [likewise… our cycling experience] - with other people.
By giving other, less fortunate people chances in life.
This is why we started up this project, biking for education. We believe that educating children is one of the most important ways of helping families break the cycle of poverty.
In the countryside around Kolkata, children still struggle to get proper education. Schools are spare, and a lot of children walk every day 10 miles back and forth to reach school. The distance often discourages the children to continue going to school.
With Cycling for education, we want to offer these kids bikes to facilitate their every-day transport to school, thus motivating them to continue school and helping them building a better future for themselves and their families.
How it all started…
8 years ago, as a medicine student, Lenie had the chance to meet some wonderful people of IIMC, the Institute for Indian Mother and Child. They work to improve the lives of the poorest people living in the rural villages of West Bengal by providing education for their children, medical and healthcare for the villagers, setting up programs to empower the women and running development projects like building toilets and constructing tube wells
Dr. Sujit, the founder of this project – who had graduated as pediatrician in Leuven in his previous life – presented his project at the university. 6 months later Lenie found herself on East Bengal ground as a medical volunteer.
It was a compelling and overwhelming experience, those 5 weeks. On the one hand it was difficult to see all these poor, poor people and to bounce against the fact that sufficient materials for necessary care were lacking.
On the other hand, it was astonishing to see how the people of the IIMC made the impossible possible with such little supplies.
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When she left, she wanted to do much more for this people.
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