Many students include cycling as a part of their summer activities, but two UVic students are taking summer bike rides to a much higher level.

First-year writing student Cody Gold and third-year history student Sarah Curry will be embarking on a month-and-a-half-long bike ride to Tijuana, Mexico from Vancouver (3,000 kilometers total) on May 31.

They, along with 22 other riders, will be riding to raise money with Global Agents for Change, a non-profit organization based out of Vancouver. The money raised will go to Kiva, the world’s first person-to-person micro-lending website. The goal of the ride, which is in its third year, is to raise $100,000 for critical global development goals and to support microcredit.

Kiva aims to help the working poor in developing countries get on their feet. On the website, a donor is able to choose someone they would like to support, then donate that money to Kiva, which passes it straight along to the entrepreneur. Over time, the entrepreneur pays the money back to the donor, who can then lend the money to someone else in need.

Most loans are used for a business, but some are used for housing improvements. For example, one entrepreneur from Acuna, Mexico is requesting $725 to buy vinyl flooring (and to pay for the labour) so he can move into his house. His loan term is to pay $60.42 back to his donor(s) each month for 11 months. All the entrepreneurs on Kiva are screened in order to be a part of the program. The program itself has a 97 per cent payback rate.

“It’s a hand up rather than a hand out,” Gold said, adding that the loans have relatively minimal interest.

Gold first heard about the ride in January through the Outdoors Club, while Curry heard about it in October from a friend who attends Simon Fraser University. Curry isn’t an avid bike rider — in fact, her bike isn’t even set up yet — but she liked the idea of raising money for the cause and she liked the challenge involved.

Gold, on the other hand, has extensive experience on his bike.

“Last May I went across Scotland, the southeast coast of Ireland and England,” he said.

In order to go on the ride, each participant must raise $3,000, none of which goes toward the costs of the ride itself. To register, each participant paid $200, and the estimated cost of food and other expenses is $800. But there will be no staying in hotels for the riders.

“The goal is to get free accommodation along the way,” Gold said. “We are required to bring tents and sleeping bags.”

Curry said the options are often plentiful.

“We camp, or stay in churches or schools,” she said.

Where they stay from night to night is already planned out, so it’s important that the group stays on schedule. If everything goes well, the riders are expected to finish on July 12 in Tijuana. When they’re finished, Curry will be flying back up almost immediately to Canada to attend a wedding in Kamloops, while Gold is leaving his plans open-ended with hopes of riding down Mexico’s coast.

When the group is two weeks shy of their finishing date, a different group will be beginning a ride in Europe on July 1, cycling from Amsterdam to Istanbul.

To raise money, Curry and Gold (who didn’t know each other previously) are participating in fundraising efforts as well as asking for private sponsors — “a lot of lawyers,” Curry said.

On March 7, Curry organized “Hunks For Hire,” where she auctioned off her male friends to do chores for the highest bidders.

In that effort, she raised about $1,000, but both she and Gold still have a long way to go.

“I’m [fundraising] pretty desperately,” Gold said.

On May 9, Gold and Curry will be hosting a pledge ride from UVic to the legislative buildings. Details will be announced closer to the rides date.

For more information about the ride, or about what Gold and Curry are doing, e-mail Curry at scurry@uvic.ca.

To pledge to the two directly, go to GlobalAgentsForChange2.pincgiving.com, and pick their names from the list to donate.