General News of Monday, 27 August 2018

Source: www.ghanaweb.com

4 friends ride bamboo bicycles to Nigeria to raise funds to fight malaria

4 friends who rode from Ghana To Nigeria on bamboo bicycles play video4 friends who rode from Ghana To Nigeria on bamboo bicycles

The desire of four friends to attract investments to a project they are embarking on to help fight one of Africa's most endemic diseases, malaria has compelled them to go on an unbelievable journey to Nigeria.

The four; Kwame Bekoe, Nana Prempeh, Francis Monnie and Godfred Owusu all of whom are entrepreneurs and agriculturists took rode to Nigeria from Ghana on bamboo bicycles.

Kwame Bekoe convener of the group asserted that the decision to contribute their quota to the fight against malaria on the continent and specifically in Ghana is borne by the effect the sickness has on children and the vulnerable.

The convener stressed that Ghana at this point in its development cannot afford to still lose its human resource to malaria and pledged to go the extra mile to end this canker.

As such, the project to halt malaria is being done in partnership with Village of Hope in Kasoa and all proceeds from the project will be sent directly to them to fund equipment and medication they need.

The four friends chose the 20th of August 2018 which is marked internationally as World Mosquito Day to embark on their 6 days journey to Nigeria on bicycles which they described as an adventure worth experiencing again.

Explaining the details behind the road trip Kwame Bekoe noted, "When you look at statistics around the world people who are most infected by the disease is here in Africa. So it's a big issue. In Africa, almost half a million people die every year because of malaria so we just had this passion to do something to combat the disease and we decided that what we will do is to embark on a project on the 20th of August which is actually World Mosquito Day. So we embarked on a journey from Accra all the way to Lagos. The main purpose of the road journey is to just create a lot of publicity on the cause and impact of what malaria is actually doing"



Appealing for support, Kwame Bekoe and his colleagues urged the general public to contribute anything little they wish to help their course.

He explained that Village of Hope will receive all funds accepted from donors internationally on the go fund me account www.gofundme.com/accra-to-lagos-cycle-ride-4-malaria?member=664036 and www.payputt.com/Accra-to-Lagos for local donors

The target for the group is to raise an amount of $20, 000 in a month in support of an ongoing project by the Village of Hope to fund treatment of malaria for women, children and vulnerable.

This is not the first time they have partnered Village of Hope they disclosed as "We've been working with the Village of Hope for some months now. We recently just organised a charity event for the orphans in the Village of Hope in the past and we just decided that we wanted to step it up and do something bigger, raise more funds to support the fantastic work that these people are doing."