Humanitarian project. Sounds thrilling! Also sounds hard to achieve. There are many students of our age that dream of adventure, of leaving to some other part of the world. Romain Rambert and Lynn Buholzer, two BBA second-year students at IE in Segovia are actually doing it. They’re taking part of UNIRAID, a humanitarian student rally that aims to drive through Marocco with the purpose of bringing donations to all towns where they are driving by. 40KG of supplies are being brought per car. One condition: it has to be at least a 20-year-old car, two-wheels drive.
Their goal is to gather the supplies through donations from everyone wishing to tip in. Now, why donate? It’s simple: it’s a means to help people with less chances than us to benefit from school supply, food…etc. this is not a random donation, you also support Romain and Lynn’s initiatives.
You can also get your name drawn on the car, a shoutout on their Instagram or a feature in one of their video.
Before looking at the beginning of their experience, you can surely follow them on Instagram on @uniraidhooligans.
Here I leave the conversation I had with both of them.
Hello Romain and Lynn. First, thank you for your time to answer those questions and congratulations on your project!
- Why did you choose to carry out this project? And why now (by this I mean this year)?
“We chose this project for many different reasons. On first glance, the idea of an adventure through the Moroccan desert was what got us hooked. When we learned about all of the humanitarian aspect of the rally we knew we had to do it. Finding ways to help others is definitely something that is constantly on our mind and the impact UNIRAID has is impressive. We love cars, adventures and travel and tying that to helping others is a dream coming true. Especially during the times of a pandemic, we figured our donations would have an even larger impact than before. That along with the upcoming responsibilities we have in the third and fourth year we chose to do it this year.”
- When did you start thinking about this? And when did you decide?
“When we first applied to IE university, the university had featured past students who participated in the rally in the past. We both gained huge interest and kept it in mind throughout our studies. We did not want to do it during the first year since we wanted time to adapt to Uni and our new environment. We were sure we wanted to do it before our internships and exchanges so the second year is the perfect fit. We were worried about covid but we hope we will still be able to gain sufficient funds and everything will calm down a bit by the actual rally in February 2021.”
- How did you actually organise the logistic? The gathering of the supply you’re bringing, the car you’d buy, your personnel budget, any potential reparation of the car during the journey…etc
“The logistics has definitely been the most time-consuming aspect of this whole project. Signing up was easy but now we need to organize the car, the funds to participate and the donations. We decided the car would be the first step as it is crucial to the rally and having that already might add more credibility to the project when looking for sponsors and donations. We used our savings from past jobs to get the car. It was extremely difficult to find a car that was reliable, fit our needs, had a trustworthy seller and was around 500 euros. In the end, we got our Renault Clio from a friends cousins garage for 800 euros. From here we organized the insurance and went on to looking for donations and sponsors. We are making several social media channels where we plan on sharing our journey, update people interested and gain more credibility for the sponsors we want to reach out to.”
Thank you very much to both of them for their interview. Last thing to do: follow them, donate!
