Welcome to Our Rally Campaign

We are James van der Hoven and Mark Lawson, the organizers of the Long Ride To Freedom - a cycling journey from Johannesburg To Cape Town in South Africa

Our goals are as follows

• Stop at ten location to educate a nation about potential job losses to digital disruption and what they need to do re-skill.
• Identify land where we want to build Decentralized Innovation Villages similar to the Sustainability Institute but with a strong focus on technology to help many more South Africans pivot into the Fourth Industrial Revolution
• Improve tourism to South Africa

Why We're Raising Funds

• We're going bold! We're going to build Innovation Villages for Social Entrepreneurs who use their profits for purpose so they can help many more people.
• The money we're raising is to buy the first piece of land for the pilot project in the Cape Town area.

How We Got Here

• After serious corruption and greed broke out in South Africa in 2015, we decided we will combine everything we love with everything we don't like to build a platform and following for people to use technology to take extreme ownership of their own lives and to prepare for the Fourth Industrial Revolution

We have done a lot - key successes

• We initially created massive networks to be able distribute content.
• We connected with Universities and other professionals in the space to help us understand and give us their backing.
• We have flown the Johannesburg to meet with Prof. Mark Post to bring his Mosameat into our Decentralized Innovation Villages.
• We have seen construction companies to help us build these Innovation Villages (GIBB and Power Construction)
• James joined the Ecommerce Forum Africa and now sits on the board to help grow Ecommerce into Africa.
• We have met with the Fibre Council Of South Africa. The ride follows the fibre line down the coast of South Africa.
• We have seen refrigeration companies to help us get their fridges into the Innovation Villages so that we can cut out expensive supermarkets and clean up our planet.
• We have see companies like RS Components, FreedomWon, Agricultural Co-Ops and more to help us pull off a massive disruption so that we can bypass expensive supermarkets.
• We have flown up to see Uber Eats and to ask them to distribute the food we produce on their platform.
• We have joined organaizations like FellowsOfFire.co.za who pool their professional resuorces together to help projects like ours.
• We have connected with almost every funding foundation and venture capital group in South Africa.
• The list is incredibly long and we have worked super hard since 2015. More of the story will come out on our blog at http://longridetofreedom.com/blog

Challenges and obstacles.

• Where to begin!
• By far the hardest part has been fund raising the money we need to build out the next stages of the project.
• Only now is our president talking about the Fourth Industrial Revolution so a lot of my talks at business networks sounded like science fiction.
• People are incredibly afraid of the word disruption but now, with the #4iRSA launhed, disruptuion will become a household word

My Team

• By far, the biggest believers in this project are the organising team at CycleTheCape.com
• Mark Lawson (http://cyclethecape.com/), Ian Privett, Kurt Stemmert, Shanel Munger, Brian Joul and Sarah Round (https://bicycleadventureclub.co.uk/)

Join My Team and Spread the Word!

• The organising team leave on Nelson Mandela Day, July 18th to do a cross country initial ride to gather data, take photos and meet with people along the way so that we can do a great ride in September. We could really do with your help to raise the awareness and funds for the initial pilot Innovation Village. 
• By showing the world how serious we are, we are 100% sure all the Venture Capital and Foundations we have networked with will throw their support behind future funding oportunities.
• If we can raise the $400,00 before the official Long Ride in September, we will be able to not only start the purchasing of the land but we will be able to tell VC's and other funders that we already have the support of networks like this.

A massive thank you from all of us...and especially to the people in all my WhatsApp groups I have not even mentioned who believe they are more powerful thank they choose to believe.

In the words of John F. Kennedy, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your planet" - our spin on it.