Dubai: Wissam Al Jayyoussi will ride through 110 countries and 6 continents on a motorcycle in 18 months to raise awareness for the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF).
The founder of the Goodwill Journey, a charitable mission, hopes to raise $2.5 million (Dh9,182,874) for children in need of medical services in the Arab world.
Initially, Al Jayoussi embarked on mountain-climbing to help raise awareness, but soon realising it wasn’t the ideal method of raising awareness, he decided to travel the world on his motorcycle to spread his message and raise money.
“The turning point for me was when a father called me to help his daughter,” said Al Jayyoussi. “His daughter had scored the highest grade across the country, Palestine. But the father was so poor he wished she had failed instead so he wouldn’t feel guilty about not being able to send her to university.”
After the father’s phone call, Al Jayyoussi took up his first trip, a mountain climb, to raise funds for women wishing to further their education. He managed to raise money to help the Palestinian girl enrol to university, along with 13 other women.
After that mission, Al Jayyoussi turned his focus on helping children needing medical attention. These missions hold a different meaning for him, as he now has a child of his own.
“I have a one-and-half-year-old daughter, and even if she gets the flu, I worry,” he said. “It’s completely different now when I go on these missions to help other children.”
Every dirham makes a difference, he says. Through the donations sent to PCRF, children have been given a chance to lead healthy lives when all hope was lost.
“PCRF provided children with prosthetic limbs, they treated children with heart diseases and children with cancer,” said Al Jayyoussi. “If we’re looking for success stories, there are hundreds of them.”
For his current mission, he has two individuals from the UAE who have already agreed to donate Dh1 for every kilometre he travels. There are fund-raising events along the route that will also contribute to the cause, he said.
“I already have one fund-raiser set up in Malaysia, one in Singapore and a few, hopefully, in the United States.”
Al Jayyoussi plans to travel the world following an X-axis and Y-axis route which will be covered through his travel plan.
“The plan is to go around the world so travelling from one end of Dubai to another is covering the X-axis and then from Alaska, the highest point, to Argentina, the lowest point, will be covering the Y-axis,” he said.
He will conduct his entire trip on a bike, with only three trips requiring him to travel by aeroplane.
“Aeroplane trips will be Australia to New Zealand, New Zealand to Canada and Argentina to South Africa, travelling with the bike since shipping takes time especially when tying to complete this mission in less than two years,” he said.
— Maria Botros is a trainee at Gulf News.
