We would also like to thank the support of Karlheinz Toechterle, the Ẫustrian Federal Minister of Science and Research, for the interest shown in Ride for your Rights!
Once again, it is very important for us to receive support and to have a chance to speak to all stakeholders, in order to properly identify and tackle the problems of student mobility. The support of the Federal Ministry, we believe, is a step in the right direction and we hope to have more chances to address these issues in future. There will be much to do once the riders make it to their final destination.
Profile
Name: Reinhard Theifert
Age: 61
From Austria
Lecturer at the University of Vienna
"I wanted to support a great idea of young and engaged students. On a personal note, I felt like being taken back in time 40 years and enjoyed the adventure."
At this point, we absolutely must acknowledge Reinhard's contribution to this project.
He had his students take care of many things related to our stop in Vienna, as part of the course in Sports Management.
He lobbied for us with important institutions.
He helped with logistics.
He personally sponsored some equipment. He joined the Ride! He helped Stephanie meet us in Vienna.
He was always supportive and cheered everyone up.
The project has the Bike of Honour, but for the group, the greatest honour was to have him by our side.
Now that we've made it to Vienna and are about to head North, there is one very important reference we need to make.
Throughout the last three weeks we have lived our share of little adventures within the bigger one. We overcame the heat, the wind, the sand banks and the traffic, and naturally we had a few mechanical problems. Also, we met great people along the way and always challenged them to join the Ride.
All of this was made much easier thanks to Nanond and Xavier. These two brave bikers had a great project of their own: Ideas on Tour, focused on Sustainability concerns. They rode from Sweden to Serbia and got to Novi Sad just before our departure. They took part in our opening ceremony and handed over their bikes to us. Since then, we used these bikes as replacement every time we had a flat or invited someone to join us on a city tour. The Swedish bikes have played a great role in our trip so far, and will continue to do so in the future (it's a bumpy road to Russia).
We'd like to thank them both for the bikes, for the tools, for the help and motivation, and wish them the best of luck in their future adventures. From a fortunate coincidence we've all managed to help each other somehow, and we hope to have more opportunities in years to come.
We invite our readers to check our their blog, where they have the whole information about their motivation for the project, their trip and all the workshops they had on the way. It's great reading, we can assure you.
As for the bikes, they're still safe and we will keep them safe. We even have a few thoughts on how to put them to good use after RFYR is over, but we'll come back to that later...
So what exactly does the Bike of Honour do? Our little friend tries to meet up with high profile people who support the idea behind our 4000 km bicycle trip. Our goal is to tear down all barriers which still exist for student mobility. So the plan was/is to purposefully meet up with experts in the field of higher education or politicians who support the idea of one united Europe with equall rights for everyone. Every once in a while our white foldable Speedy Gonzales will also be ridden by role models from the field of sports. E.g. once we made it up all the way to Lithuania, our supporter Mindaugas Kuzminskas, will take a ride on it and meet with everyone who will be with us at that stage.
After the tour is finished, the Bike of Honour with all its fame and collected signatures will be auctioned. The raised amount of money will naturally go back to the main sponsors of the tour, the European University Foundation - Campus Europae, which in return will use this sum to finance students going abroad for a second year with the programme and are in financial need due to a lack of national grants.
Our next signatory and Rider of Honour is an expert on higher education. Prof. Germain Dondelinger holds the position of 'Premier Conseiller de Gouvernement” in Luxembourg. Not only is he the coordinator for higher education in the Luxembourg Ministry of culture, higher education and research but he is also the vice-chair of the Bologna Follow-up Group. Thus, he was the right person to answer our line of questions which all Riders of Honour will be faced with.
Needless to say that the nomination for the most prestigious youth prize in Europe, the Charlegmane Youth Prize, was a success by itself. But receiving official support from Dr. Jerzy Buzek himself, tops nearly everything so far. So our little rolling white star can adorn itself with signature #3 - coming from the President of the European Parliament.
While telling Dr. Buzek about the concept of our Bike of Honour, the President was also interested in the content of our Manifesto. So with a little bit of optimism, our proposals laid out in the Manifesto will find listeners in circles we originally only wanted to address after the tour with concrete results. This is certainly a huge step forward for everyone.
Meanwhile it is up to you and your friends to back our initiative by signing the Manifesto online. The European Commission is about to publish their draft on the Multiannual Financial Framework 2014 - 2020 and everyone is hoping for a major budgetary shift towards education and mobility. Fraternite 2020 asks for 20 billion Euros yearly for exchange programmes and will launch a European Citizen's Initiative in 2012. Until then it is up to the Ride for your Rights! movement to put some pressure on decision makers from the base of reality. So do something for your own educational rights by signing the Manifesto and by telling your friends about the movement.
This is what the President had to say about our work:
"Ride for your Rights! is a movement representative of a generation of young Europeans who understand their responsibility in the development of our continent and society. These youngsters are an excellent example of active citizenship. I wish all participants the best of luck."
If we take the President by his word, we also count on your signatures!
Ride for your Rights! is proud to present the first official Rider of Honour to break in the Bike of Honour.
In the spirit of the project we aimed high to begin with and were not disappointed the slightest. MEP Doris Pack, Chair of the Committee on Culture and Education, was our first guest to take the tour's special bicycle for a spin and to sign its frame.
The 'Bike of Honour' serves as a symbolic link of all countries involved in Ride for your Rights! It is supported by an electric motor to express the necessity for an extra boost student mobility is in need of. It is reserved for VIPs and European leaders who share the same vision as we do. 'Riders of Honour' will get to sign the frame after haven taken it for a ride. The letter box attached to it holds our manifesto and is our moving collection point where you can drop in your ideas for improving student mobility in Europe.
But our ideas and your requests are not everything. Therefore, we will ask all our Riders of Honour to share their vision of an ideal Europe with us and to suggest ways how to realise this. Ride for your Rights! strongly believes that student mobility and innovative exchange programmes such as Campus Europae are the answer to an ideal society in Europe. Watch the following video of Doris Pack to hear from an expert on education and culture what needs to be done and improved in a joint Europe.
Who will be the next Rider of Honour? Stay hooked and find out soon.
'How on earth?' is the question I lately often ask myself. About a year ago I thought to myself what if... what if we got a group of students from different countries together to ride a bicycle across the continent in order to convey a strong message.
One year later and with helping hands from all sides and countries, the first born thoughts have transformed themselves into a firm looking project.
Next to having been nominated for the European Charlegmane Youth Prize, gaining support from top-notch athletes and Olympic Champions, the spirit of Ride for your Rights! has touched great personalities one normally would not encounter in the daily grind. Not long ago, I had the honour of meeting one of Austria's most inspiring persons alive. Three-time nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize Ms Hildegard Goss-Mayr sat down with me and shared her thoughts on the importance of Human Rights teaching in Higher Education, on the necessity of nonviolent action among the youth and on the positive effects exchange programmes can have on society. If you want to catch a glimpse of the interview check out the following video.
But Hildegard Goss-Mayr was not the only inspirational person I came across lately. Stuart and Gregory from IFOR Austria were the ones making it possible for me to shoot the video and also left a deep impression on me. Generally speaking, it is not exactly normal that you meet such positive thinking guys who offer their help for free only because they believe in the underlying meaning of a project when they normally work with people such as Jane Goodall, Erin Gruwell or Adolfo Perez Esquivel. Have a look at their latest and most ambitious project FairSoul. One of my favorite videos is the one of social activists and musicians Topoke and Dominik Nostitzt who are also based in Vienna.
What you should know is that you can meet Gregory and Stuart (maybe even Ms Hildegard Goss-Mayr) in Vienna on July 20, when we'll have our workshop on nonviolent action in cooperation with IFOR Austria. Btw, with its aim and constant endeavours for promoting peace and nonviolent action around the globe, IFOR played a vital role in the civil rights movement caused by Dr Martin Luther King back in the days.
My personal conclusion of all this: Positivism attracts positivism!
Julian
PS: A big thank you to everyone contributing to the realisation and success of Ride for your Rights!
Ever wondered what a cycling critical mass of students has in common with a professional football freestyler born in Guinea? At first sight - apart from people using round objects for different purposes - not much!
Undoubtedly, Iya Traore is currently the most wanted football freestyler on the planet. He attracts and entertains thousands of people, young and old, tourists and locals, live or on French's got talent. Wherever he puts on his show and demonstrates his unbelievable skills, Iya Traore puts a spell on any spectator and raises awareness galore. In this respect, we found our first match. Ride for your Rights! was intiated to raise awareness and to be seen. Clearly we'd have to do handstands on our bicycles in order to achieve similar results but with a little help of everyone we can gather enough young Europeans who want to be seen and heard.
Our second match can be found when comparing the reasons behind 'the show'. In his biography Iya tells his fans that he had to stop playing for Paris Saint Germain at the top of his career because Iya had to support his father and pursue his studies. Despite these obstacles in his personal life, "With a positive attitude, Iya decided to keep on playing football, but in an original way." His eagerness to make it to the top has rewarded him with holding the Guinness World Record, various invitations to TV shows around the world and even having played for former president Jacques Chirac. So what does Iya do with all the fame? Iya has understood his function as a role model for the youth and he continues passing on his skills and knowledge to youngsters at his own football camps and at his football club back home in Guinea. In brevity, Iya shares his passion and skills for a good reason - he wants to cause a change and help those in need for better conditions.
Ride for your Rights! wishes Iya all the best in the future and is looking forward to meeting him again one day in Paris or maybe even in Guinea.
Julian
PS: On a personal note, when I first met Iya and asked him whether he would like to support Ride for your Rights! I had no idea about his popularity. Only after he had done his show for us and I had looked him up on the web and learnt about his fame, I was truly awestruck at first, then felt extremely honoured, and finally I was full of enthusiasm once again that Ride for your Rights! has great potential for reaching our own goals in Europe.
Another sportsman from the Baltic is supporting Ride for your Rights!
Māris Štrombergs, from Latvia, is a professional BMX racer with a very impressive list of titles, including that of first Olympic BMX Gold Medalist, which he conquered in Beijing, 2008.
Hardly a coincidence, that we'd seek support from someone who rides a bicycle for a living... But let's leave it to Štrombergs to tell you what he thinks about the project:
Visit our website to see how you can join us and meet our supporters. It's time to get up on your bike and Ride for your Rights!
The Ride for your Rights! project is proud to have Mindaugas Kuzminskas as one of its first supporters.
Kuzminskas is a shooting forward for BC Žalgiris (Kaunas, LT), considered a rising star in Lithuanian basketball and drawing attention from both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
