One of the rules to participate in the rally is to raise money for charity. Because it’s only fair if you’re going out of your way to see what the world has to offer that you make an effort to give a little something back. Each team should raise £1000, with at least £500 raised for the Rallies official charity Cool Earth. The other charity is one of our own choice. Therefor, we’ve chosen the awesome charity ‘Plan’ and especially ‘Plan Belgium’.
So what do these charities do?
COOL EARTH
Cool Earth is the charity that works alongside indigenous villages to halt rainforest destruction. The only way to halt destruction is to align the future of the rainforest with the people best placed to protect it. This means placing forest in the hands of the people who rely on its survival for their survival. Half of the world’s rainforest has been destroyed in the last 40 years. Contrary to the headlines, the rainforest continues to be lost at a faster rate than ever. But it’s not too late. Cool Earth believes the rainforest can be saved. We just need a new approach. They are also the only charity that works solely where the threat to the forest is greatest, on the frontline of deforestation. Each of the partnerships forms a shield to make the neighbouring forest inaccessible to loggers – saving millions of acres of further forest.
We put local people back in control, giving them the resources they need to keep their forest intact. And by saving at-risk rainforest, we form shields for millions of acres of neighbouring forest.
What Cool Earth does
- They never bought and never will buy land. Instead, they help the local communities take legal control of their forest.
- By building better schools, better clinics and better incomes, they ensure rainforest protection goes hand in hand with better lives.
- They focus their efforts on rainforest that is most at-risk and which would otherwise be destroyed within the next 18 months.
- The protected forest forms a shield to make millions of acres of neighbouring forest inaccessible to loggers.
PLAN BELGIUM
Plan is committed to enabling children to achieve their full potential and ensure their overall well-being, which can only be achieved in a protective and conducive environment. One of Plan’s key strengths is its close and long-term collaboration with communities and bringing communities together to drive long-term change. Communities, families and children themselves are an integral part of any effective child protection system. As such, they focus on bringing the participants together to collaborate in building a long-term protective environment for children in the communities where they work.
Families and caregivers are a key safety net for children. By supporting and prioritising them, they can help ensure that they are in a stronger position to create and maintain a positive family environment and play a critical role in the holistic development of children.
We work to promote free, equal access to quality education for all children – from early learning to secondary education.
Children and young people have a right to a quality education – one that is safe, child-friendly and includes a broad range of life experiences and learning processes. Their education should promote human rights and gender equality, be fully inclusive and be adapted to meet children’s diverse needs.
We’ve chosen Plan as our main charity because, after this adventure, we’ll be travelling further through South-East Asia, where there are a lot of children living in small villages in poverty without a nice future like most of us western people. A lot of them are also forced to marry at a young age.
Update: We raised a total of 1800 dollar for these two charities after we have finished The Mongol Rally.
