Jassim Al Maadeed (second right), founder of World Autism Ride, with riders during the launch of World Autism Ride from Qatar to the world, in Doha. Pic: Abdul Basit / The Peninsula
World Autism Ride, described as the world’s largest motorbike ride, was announced here yesterday to raise funds as well as public awareness to support autistic children worldwide.
The ride will start next month from Shafallah Center for Children with Special Needs in Doha and will cover 26 countries. The launch event is expected to bring in more than 2,000 people including autism supporters and families of autistic children to witness the start of the historical world motorbike ride, it was announced at a press conference held at W- hotel yesterday.
The world autism ride will go through 26 countries for more than 28,000 km in Europe, America and Asia, spreading autism awareness from Qatar to the world. A wide range of entertainment programmes and activities will be held in this event in the presence of motorbike rides from Gulf countries.
Talking to The Peninsula, Jassim Al Maadeed, Founder and CEO of World Autism Ride, said: “The idea of World Autism Ride was generated one year ago as we were working on it for one year. I usually travel on motorbike, but this ride I want to dedicate to autistic people. The reason behind choosing autism as a cause is because of my son and I dedicate this to him and all the families who go through this condition. This ride will be a three-month-and-a -half long journey starting from Qatar to Saudi Arabia and then to Jordan, Netherlands and Washington DC and then California to Toronto. We will travel from California to Japan. Japan to Asia, and from Turkey we will travel back to Qatar.”
“Our team consists of 12 people in total, four of us will ride bikes, six will be from the government and other logistics that we will need. The objective is to bring Qatar into the world wide autism charity and to spread the knowledge about this special case that can happen in any family and unfortunately 9 out of 10 families don’t have the knowledge of how to deal with autistic children. In fact they look at it as a disease , or some kind of sickness when it is simply a special case happening to 1 out of 60 people yearly,” he added.
The project was launched in the presence of Qatar Autism Ambassador, who will go through the ultimate test and show his strong will by travelling the world on their motorbikes visiting all leading autism centers. This unique idea of ride is the first one of its kind.
