It’s been one year and one month since we first heard from a group of young women travelling on tandem bicycles from Jakarta to Amsterdam. Ride for Women’s Rights (R4WR), were cycling 14,000km, crossing 30 countries and now, they are home. These four young graduates, Carlijn Bettink, Lidewij Ponjee, Sophie van Hoof and Monique van der Veeken, collectively known as R4WR, have now completed their incredible journey, and it seemed fitting to ask them to be a part of our 16 days of Activism, on Day Ten: The Role of Youth.
We hear from Carlijn Bettink, President of R4WR.
“How does it feel to be back? Is it strange living back in the Netherlands again? Do you miss each other now back?”
These are just a few of the questions I hear a lot these days. As I write this chapter I realise it has been exactly one month since we arrived back in the Netherlands. Let’s take a look back in time…
In 2013/14 I had to study hard in order to graduate for my Masters in Medical Anthropology in Amsterdam; it was also the year I turned 24 and the year me and my three childhood friends Sophie, Monique and Lidewij founded our own organization Ride 4 Women’s Rights (R4WR). Through the organization, we wanted to raise awareness for women’s rights worldwide so over the course of 14 months, we set out on an incredible journey from Indonesia on two bright red tandem bicycles and cycled all the way back to the Netherlands.
Crossing 30 countries, we looked to achieve a greater understanding of what women’s rights meant to different people around the world by talking to various institutions, organizations and individual men and women. We have shared all the information we collected with our followers so feel free to join them and visit us via Facebook R4WR and our website www.r4wr.org.
We encountered many different cultures, food and people. But despite the many differences we experienced from country to country, there were also many similarities and sadly none more evident than the violence against and discrimination shown towards women and girls.
Violence practised against girls and women remains a huge problem all around the world. I had – perhaps a little naively on my part – hoped that in this day and age we might have progressed further and overcome a lot of these issues that back at home many of us take for granted. Unfortunately, the more we cycled and the more people we met, the more it became clear that this could not be further from the truth.
On telling our friends and family that we wanted to cycle halfway around the world on ‘third-hand’ tandems, they all laughed, and more often than not the response was: ‘What are these four up to now?’. They had a point. I wouldn’t exactly jump for joy had my future daughter harbored similar ambitions. However, sitting back on the couch would not have had the desired effect and certainly wouldn’t have brought the same attention to women’s rights. We wanted to experience it all with our own eyes and in doing so gain a far greater perspective on the daily struggles faced by so many women that are unfortunately all-too-often ignored.
There are so many institutions, organizations and service clubs worldwide that each and every day are achieving extraordinary things in the field of women’s rights. However the participation of the younger generation is essential to ensure this great work has not been in vain. Growing up in the age of social media and a world in which information is now more readily available than ever, it is so important that we make full use of this forum when raising awareness and come together to eradicate this senseless violence once and for all.
If the idea of riding an old tandem halfway around the world isn’t your cup of tea, there are so many other ways to raise awareness – all it takes is a little imagination. I hear eBay also sells scooters…"
Carlijin
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