"Dear Soroptimists,

My name is Carlijn Bettink, 24 years old,
and together with three friends from the Netherlands I founded the organization
R4WR (Ride 4 Women’s Rights). We are cycling 14,000km on two tandem bikes from
Jakarta back to Amsterdam to raise awareness for women’s rights. We will cross
over 22 countries and have been on the road for almost 4 months now. A question
that we get a lot is:

why on earth do you want to cycle 14,000km?

Let me tell
you why…

When I was 18, I thought that I already
was a full grown person with values, thoughts, and ideas, and knew exactly who
I was. I was wrong. It was during my student time that I became who I am today.

Unlike most peers, I did not go to
University after high school. I wanted to see the world and explore the
continent I had already read a lot about: Asia. I decided to go to Nepal and
Vietnam and it was this year that made me decide to study Anthropology once I
came back to the Netherlands.

I started studying in Leiden and it became
five amazing years. After a full year of exploring and learning in Asia, Leiden
brought me other insights. Meeting new people, living in a house with 13 girls,
first serious relationships, and of course an interesting study.

The summers during these years of studying
were always blocked at the beginning of the year for a travelling trip with my
three childhood friends, Sophie, Monique, and Lidewij. Since we were 14 we had
done this and it became our ritual: travelling the four of us together, every year.
It started at a camp site, half an hour’s drive from the village where we grew
up, but soon got bigger and brought us to Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and
Asia.

 

Photograph: R4WR – Carlijn Bettink, Lidewij Ponjee, Sophie van Hoof and Monique van der Veeken.

During our travels, we always spent time
catching up and talked a lot, about everything. This also included discussions
about student life, and when we got older.  It struck us that student life is
very much focused on your own personal development. A student nowadays has to
be the best at their studies, but also do many extracurricular activities that
will contribute to the perfect Curriculum Vitae. Without it, you can forget
about a job.

"We started talking
about the idea of doing something that involves a greater cause and a bigger
picture".  

Unlike parents who are always thinking
about their kids, or a grandmother who is worried about her children and
grandchildren, as a student you are free to only look after yourself and this
freedom is obviously very welcoming at this time. But at the end of our student
lives, we started thinking about the option of not immediately forcing
ourselves into jobs which are also only about ourselves. We started talking
about the idea of doing something that involves a greater cause and a bigger
picture.

 

But what was something that we thought was
worth doing something for? Something we truly believed in? It only took us 15
minutes to realize… it was women’s rights that brought us to where we are today.
Because of developments in women’s rights, we had the opportunity to study,
develop ourselves, make the travels we did. Something we did not want to take
for granted. We decided it was time to give something back for women’s rights.

We founded the organization R4WR, which
stands for Ride 4 Women’s Rights and started talking with sponsors, the media,
cycling experts, and with organizations that focus on women empowerment. It
took us one year to prepare everything, decide upon the route, save money
ourselves, and of course convince our parents that it was indeed a very good
plan.

 

During these days of cycling, we visit
local women’s empowerment projects and we collect stories which we share on social media through blogs, photos and videos. With this, we hope to create a bridge between
different cultures and women’s rights in different contexts.

 

Photograph: Carlijn meets up with visiting Soroptimist President SI Geelong, Karen Thornton in Bangkok. Read more on R4WR and the Soroptimists in our previous news story here. 

Via this message I would like to invite
the Soroptimists to follow our Ride 4 Women’s Rights, our way to contribute to
the fight for gender equality, which is very much needed the world over. You
can follow our R4WR Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/R4WR.org or visit our website www.r4wr.org.

 

 

For now, a Happy New Year! Four months on the road, ten more to go in 2015.

Our New Year’s resolution: start learning Russian as preparation for Central Asia. Nostrovia!"

Carlijn Bettink