[CLICK TO GIVE TO OUR CHARITY FUNDRAISER](https://www.crowdrise.com/acrossindiaforacause1/)

Our story begins a decade ago on the campus of Winston-Salem State University. These three young brothers pulled double-duty as dreamers and academic scholars with aspirations to launch from the breezeway, (where coeds were known to congregate between classes) into diverging career paths, highlighted by advanced degrees and individual accolades. However, we’ve never lost sight of our commitment to “depart to serve,” and our youthful curiosity and desire for personal growth. Our collegiate involvements were vastly dissimilar: one guy the chapter President of his fraternity, another the Founder and President of a Pan-African organization, the final a President of a black-male civic engagement organization. All connected by an insatiable appetite for accomplishment and adventure, never knowing their worlds would re-collide in a three-wheeled rickshaw on the excursion of a lifetime!

A two-week, odyssey across India at neck breaking speeds of up to 40 miles per hour through uncertain terrain, as we race from the Rajasthani desert to the Meghalayan hills. The purpose of our pilgrimage is to:
1. raise awareness and capital for a few charitable causes that have captured our hearts.
2. Live out our dreams of being modern-day, Robinson Crusoes plodding across a foreign land.

The first of those causes is the official charity of the Rickshaw Run, Cool Earth. Cool Earth, is a registered US 501 (c) (3) that has been working since 2004 to halt the destruction of the world’s most endangered rain forests. By building better incomes, better schools and better clinics, Cool Earth is able to put the indigenous people of the villages living on the front lines of deforestation, back in control of these precious lands. The same people who have lived in, and cared for our delicate natural resources for countless generation. At least 90% of each donation to Cool Earth goes directly to the projects supporting indigenous people who are preserving our rainforests.

We will have a second charity we will be supporting and we will announce that shortly.

As we trek across the choppy terrain of Hinustan, we will be fueled by both the local delicacies and the gratification of knowing that our travels are subsidizing institutions making positive impacts both domestically and abroad. A relating only made possible by the generosity of our numerous sponsors.

As part of entry fee, the good people at Rickshaw Run are outfitting us with blog that we will update religiously for all our families, friends, and donors. You will have the pleasure of experiencing along with us every pothole, majestic photograph, rickshaw malfunction, and wonderful native that we happen upon on our trip to the Taj Mahal.

Be sure to bookmark our homepage, and be on the lookout for updates starting (appropriately) on April Fool’s Day, 2016. In all seriousness, we’re indelibly grateful to each and every donor, well-wisher, and prayer warrior. For without you, none of this would ever be imaginable.

Up next, 3,000km of pan-Indian laughs, mishaps, and memories. God’s speed.