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The 2022 Ride
Stories are important.They are the ancient place from which we began.
This story about two unlikely people gathering their communities to hop on bikes and create something worthwhile together. This is about our beginning.
Amwe In The News
Watch-Amwe Kenya’s Ride in the News Clip
This is Robert & Kens tucked a truck bed zooming across wicked green landscape where we met on the Institute of Emerging Visionaries farm in Hawaii. It took only a few hours of speaking and washing dishes side by side to realize we shared a serious heart for the land, women, and global health. We also shared fire to create something of it.
At the time, Robert was running the non-profit Naledi, which supports an incredible group of women and girls thrive in his hometown of Tharaka, Kenya. Kens had been tucked in the fields and valleys, working on non-profit projects that utilize the outdoors as a platforms for solidarity and allyship amongst people.
We had both had seen, felt and touched the power of nature to unite human beings.
So with no expectations and a lot of heart, we decided to try a thing. Amwe movement- translating to moving together or together movrment. We decided to gather our people and do just that-move.
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The plan.
Team Kenya Riders, Meru.
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The ride teams and the humans that comprised them were incredible.
Donations of food, water, cash and cake pooled in from aunties, uncles, grandmas and strangers.
The people gathered in ways we could have never imagined.
In Kenya, hundreds of local people lined up in the dawn to be screened at Robert's medical camp.1500 locals were screened and cared for free of cost, most of which were women that day.
In California, We raised over $13,000 in one weekend.
This was enough to successfully secure NHF health insurance that covered chemotherapy and major surgery for the women who came back cancer positive from the Roberts medical camp.
We met our goal & had left over to dream with.
Medical Camp Staff and waiting Line, Tharaka.
From then on we met on Zoom every week. We would listen to Bob Marley, drink lime tea and ideate how we could weave our people together to support womankind. We came up with idea after idea, until one clicked. The Amwe Peace Ride was born.
Robert would organize a team of 14 Kenyan Riders to bike from Meru to Tharaka. They'd ride over 200 miles to raise awareness for cancer. It would end in a free medical screening camp. He would organize volunteer doctors, nurses and gynecologists to provide free cancer and medical screenings the community in rural Tharaka.
Kens would organize a team of 24 wild California women to bike up the jade coast at the very same time. They would move together with purpose. The CA ride would raise funds to cover medical insurance bills for those who came back cancer positive from the medical camp.
For the first time, February 2023 we rode, spoke, sang, belly laughed across seas for the world we wanted to see created.
We called in community and community came.
The Results.
Amwe Ride California Scene
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After meeting our initial goal, we sat together, feet planted in the Kenyan summer sun. We discussed how the women of the Makenna Women's Group (our partners) could envision us working together. We talked about how our cultures could feed one another what we are hungry for. We recognized how the areas we come from have opposing points of abundance to be shared. We explored how financial capital, community, and cultural wisdom are all valuable resource to be exchanged. We explored togetherness.
We laughed, listened and dreamed. Trainings in women's small business entreprenuership, village planning and the community led programs outlined below began to emerge.
Women's Self Sustanance Garden Program
-Sustenance Home Garden Training- Grow bags used to cultivate home gardens with Kale and Potatoes.
-Women of the Makenna Women's Group Successfully began their own 1000 Neem tree nursery to sell locally and share profits.
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Emergency Food and Medical Supply Fund
-Adding funds to emergency food and medical supply drive to respond to Stage 3 droughts in the Samburu & Turkana Region
-Robert and his team delivered goods to over 1000 crisis households
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