Seth and Noah’s Ride for AFH

"One cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” – Andre Gide.

For

those of you that dont know us, our names are Noah Broch and Seth

Hartman and we are rising juniors at Binghamton University and

Washington University in St. Louis. On June 3rd, we will dip our wheels

into the Atlantic Ocean at Rye Beach in New York to commence a six week

cross country bicycle tour with the goal of reaching the Santa Monica

Pacific Pier in Los Angeles, California.

Biking across America

has been a dream of both of ours since we were in Middle School. At the

time, the whole thing seemed like a faraway fantasy, an undertaking of

independence, maturity, and determination that we were not ready for at

all. But it was still fun to pretend. And then earlier this year, we

realized that neither of us had any real plans for the summer and that

this would be the perfect time for making our long-time dream a very

real reality.

Preparation has been long and strenuous. We have

stressed over every detail and have been saving our own money for

funding a large part of the trip. From daily biking regimens to

researching tips and stories from those who have done this before, we

believe that we are as prepared as we can ever be for biking across the

country.

A large part of preparing is figuring out sleeping

arrangements at each nightly destination. As we will not be staying in

hotels, we will need the help of friends and family for lodging. In

addition we will be camping, utilizing sites like CouchSurfer.com as

well as other community resources (Ex: Churches, Fire Houses, Town Halls

etc.) for getting hosted and taken in for the night.

Despite it

being our adventure, this trip is not entirely about us. We realized

that this would be a perfect way to increase awareness and support for a

cause that we both care about, which is helping other kids who our not

as fortunate as we are.

Artists for Humanity (AFH) is an amazing

Boston non-profit organization that creates jobs for under-resourced

youth eager to have a voice and make a difference in their community. As

young apprentices, 250+ teens receive mentorship from professional

artists and designers and engage in the creative process – and get paid a

wage and earn commissions for the sale of their work! Local businesses,

organizations, and individuals come to AFH looking for creative

solutions to their design needs and find a profession, youth

perspective. AFH teens deliver an excellent product and learn valuable

skills in the process.

With such an awesome program, you won't be

surprised to read that the demand for a job at AFH is huge - they have a

waiting list of 200+ teens ready to start work. Likewise, business

demand for AFH innovative designs is enormous.Corporations often have to

wait six months to get an AFH-designed orginal!

AFH has come up

with a solution and that is to expand their current youth arts

enterprise facility, the Artists For Humanity EpiCenter, adding 52,000

sq. ft. to employ 500+ teens in new technologies in the Northeast’s

first energy positive building.

We would like to thank everyone

who has pledged support to us; we are very grateful and hope that you

all have as much faith in us as we do ourselves.

Link to AFH website: http://afhboston.org/