One former banker in Hong Kong is about to embark on the trip of a lifetime: a 100-day motorbike trip across Asia to raise money and awareness for charities
The Wheel2WHeel team.Morgan Parker is getting nervous. In less than a month, the lanky 36-year-old will hop on his BMW F800 GS motorcycle for a 100-day, 20,000-kilometer ride through 10 countries.
“Our lives have become so predictable, so regimented that when you break out from that, you start to experience fear and anxiety -- and that’s what I’m feeling right now,” he says.
But then he reminds himself that the trip is for a good cause. In fact, 10 good causes.
Two years ago, Parker quit his investment banking job and started a non-profit charitable foundation, Wheel2Wheel, that is raising money and awareness for charities in Hong Kong, China, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, East Timor and Australia.
During his trip, Parker will be trailed by a film crew, and by the time he rolls into his hometown of Brisbane, he will have enough material for a National Geographic TV series that he hopes will bring the world’s attention to the small charities he has chosen and the issues they are dealing with.
We sat down with Parker in his spacious Shouson Hill home to chat about Wheel2Wheel and the upcoming trip. Here’s what he had to say.
CNNGo: How did this all come to be?
Morgan Parker: The financial crisis in 2008 and 2009 provided a good opportunity for a lot of people to reflect on what they were doing and why. For me, it was an opportunity to look at how obsessed we have become with the race for financial gain and self-satisfaction. I became disconcerted with that value system.
I started in 2008 to give more systematically to charitable organizations that I found interesting. But I continued to be somewhat dissatisfied with writing a check and just handing it to a charity and not knowing whether I was making a difference.
Even with organizations that give donors feedback, there’s still a feeling of helplessness, that you don’t really know exactly how it’s being spent.
That got me talking to a lot of charitable organizations about what they need, and I found there are three things they are looking for.
Firstly and most obviously, it’s money. The second one is volunteers, who provide the human capital required to make things happen. The third one is awareness.
Most charities out there struggle to get airtime. There are so many charitable organizations now that it’s hard for one to distinguish itself from another.
Every business executive is sitting on an enormous asset that they don’t realize they have -- their address book. After 15 years I had an address book of about 5,000 contacts, and they all have contacts of their own.
How can I try and turn that into something worthwhile for a charitable organization? That was the first step towards Wheel2Wheel.
CNNGo: And why are you doing this journey by motorcycle?
Parker: I didn’t have any experience riding motorbikes until four years ago. My friends were riding and listening to them talk about the experience they got from it, I was intrigued that grown men could talk in terms of being liberated and feeling the wind in their face and their senses being charged.
When people talk about motorbiking they talk with such passion, so I thought, if what charities need is attention, maybe if I stage a huge motorcycle adventure I can inspire everyone in my little black book to donate money and tell their friends.
Instead of giving them HK$100, I’m going to spend that HK$100 on an event that will get lots of other people to give them HK$500.
CNNGo: You’ll be passing through 10 countries and you’ve chosen a charity in each one. How did you decide which charities to support?
Parker: That’s been the biggest challenge so far. It’s taken the better part of two years. I’ve visited over a hundred charities across Asia.
We decided that the charities we were going to choose all had to be grassroots, meaning they were dealing with an issue from the ground up, and they have to be small, perhaps operating on an annual budget of US$100,000. There’s no point in trying to raise capital or awareness for organizations that were already receiving it.
We wanted organizations that were being led by brilliant individuals doing amazing work, but weren’t being recognized for that work.
They also had to be tackling big issues. There were a lot of charities that came to my attention that were dealing with niche issues like cataracts on eyes in China.
They’re great organizations and I support them personally through my own foundation, but for Wheel2Wheel we wanted to deal with environmental issues like air pollution that affect tens of millions of people.
Of the ten organizations that we selected, five are directly involved in the environment, which is my major concern.
CNNGo: CNNGo: Publicity aside, how exactly are you going to help these charities?
Parker: Let me give you an example. In China, the greatest problem it has is the environment. Improving its environment is also a huge opportunity -- it’s the most important thing it can contribute to the world.
For things to improve, people need to be educated about the importance of maintaining the environment, and if the government doesn’t do that, people need to do it themselves.
The older generation of Chinese have grown up in an era when the environment has been completely and utterly destroyed and abused to achieve economic growth. Children are growing up without any knowledge of that because it’s not part of the school curriculum.
We’ve chosen a group called Gecko that goes into schools and teaches them about environmental issues. They’re doing amazing work, but they don’t have the resources to send enough people into schools to teach their curriculum. So we’re raising money for them to set up an online portal with teaching materials about the environment that can be accessed by all schools in China.
CNNGo: You’re involved in philanthropy beyond Wheel2Wheel. What’s the best way for someone to choose where to donate their money?
Parker: My mother said to me, “Every time I go to a supermarket, I get hit up by three different charitable organizations rattling a tin in my face to give them money,” and I said, “Mum, that’s not really philanthropy, that’s just organized begging.”
If you want to be sophisticated and thoughtful about the way to contribute to society, you don’t want to just give money to a tin. It really starts with a genuine, heartfelt interest in a particular topic.
Find a single issue that you are passionate about and find out who is involved with it. Get busy and research charity organizations you the same way you do research before going on a holiday or buying a car.
CNNGo: You’ve got less than a month until you start your journey. Are you worried about anything going wrong?
Parker: There’s a lot of stuff that’s being planned to make the trip work. We’re going to be building a school when I’m in Laos, we’re going to see Gecko in action in a classroom in Yangshuo.
We’re also making sure it’s going to work for TV. The film crew will fly in and meet me at each of the charities, but I won’t be followed by them the whole time because we don’t have the budget for that.
Instead, we’re asking all the art and film schools in Hong Kong if there are any students who want to get some real work experience by trailing me. I’ve also got a helmet cam, a bike cam and a handheld camera that I’ll be using when I’m on the road.
I’m looking at motorbike forums online and I’ve discovered that if it can happen, it will happen. Things will go wrong. The bike and maintenance of the bike is one big bucket of potential problems.
There are also logistical and regulatory problems, like not having the right paperwork to get into a Communist country, or discovering that a ferry won’t carry a bike when we thought it would.
I’ll be biking through the desert in Australia where there are 1,200 kilometers between towns. If the bike breaks down, it could take weeks for a part to arrive.
But you know, I’m approaching it all with a positive attitude. I’m a big believer that a smile is the greatest currency of all.
Read more: Wheel2Wheel: 20,000 km by motorbike | CNNGo.com http://www.cnngo.com/hong-kong/play/wheel-2-wheel-374858#ixzz1Cr31I9B7
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