Ruta del Sol Official Charity announcement

13:30 on Thu 17th Jan 2008

The first ever Ruta del Sol starts on 1st February 2008 and 7 rather brave and hardy teams will take a ropy old VW Beetle in Quito, Ecuador, point it in the direction of Rio, Brazil and set forth!

Adventurists from France, Germany, Sweden, UK, Portugal and Ecuador will make Ruta del Sol history and carve a Beetle shaped path for the rest of us to follow. This is the Pioneers edition of the Ruta del Sol so nobody really knows what will happen on this journey or if the teams will make it!

Between now and the start we’ll be introducing some of the teams with a couple of interviews but for now we have an important announcement to make.

Mery Corps’ to become official charity of the Ruta del Sol

When the Ruta del Sol launched the official charity was Fundecruz, who carry out fine work in Ecuador. The Ruta del Sol is very small at the moment but is set to grow over the coming years and depending on how the Pioneers edition goes will hopefully get bigger and bigger each year. As always with new events on this scale, plans change and then change again, so it has been decided that now is not the right time for the Ruta del Sol and Fundecruz to work together. All funds already donated to Fundecruz via the fundraising website WillWeMakeIt.com will be donated to Fundecruz.

The new official charity is the awesome Mercy Corps. Already involved with the Rickshaw Run and Mongol Rally, Mercy Corps are nothing short of ruddy brilliant at what they do.

The first ever Ruta will be supporting their projects in Columbia and Peru. You can find out more by visiting the Charities page (more information on the way). The teams will be raising money using the excellent new fundraising website WillWeMakeIt.com via their team fundraising profiles and Ruta challenge profile. See the site for more.

We will also be introducing a grass roots Ecuadorian charity to the teams and details of this will be posted on the website.