By: David Janzen, 2008 Rider

So how does a prairie boy living in Montreal get involved with a non-profit based in Vancouver, B.C. to do a bike trip to Tijuana, Mexico?  Answer:  the Greyhound bus!  My second favourite mode of transport.  On a cross-Canada Christmas bus trip from Quebec to Manitoba and beyond, I sat next to a young woman named Emma.  While building snowpeople on a highway we were waiting to re-open (somewhere over Lake Superior now) she told me about this crazy bike trip she was planning to do this summer to help Global Agents for Change build its microcredit fund.  As a fan of adventures, bicycles and great causes, I was very excited by this combination.

Now, in my opinion, fundraising, for whatever the cause, is up there with multiplication tables as one of the harshest necessary evils in life.  However, I have been repeatedly impressed at how interested and how generous all sorts of people have been when it comes to supporting microcredit.  The word is out.  Didn’t somebody win the Nobel Peace Prize for that?  Hasn’t microcredit been praised for helping rural people, particularly women?  So once the money has been repaid it can be loaned out over and over again?   In the fundraising world, there are few better feelings than having someone tell you that they have heard about this cause and would love to support what you’re doing.  In a world on the edge (or over it) of food and environmental crises,  it seems critically important that we be doing something about it.

And now it’s on to the fun part.  With only a few short weeks to go before sendoff from Vancouver, I am looking forward to meandering over the great lakes and across the prairies again to meet up with the other young adventurists who have also been working hard for Global Agents for Change from their own corners of the world.  See you soon everyone and thanks to everyone for their support!