But actually, as the brothers started to walk, the attention of the mainstream media quickly faded and then disappeared. They managed to arrange a series of excluisve articles in a Serbian newspaper, a few sporadic articles in German and Hungarian newspapers and online media, but that's all.
WorldWalk-Peacetour, Ferenc and István Ivanics are planning to walk around the world in six years, spreading the word of peace in local communities.
(No) Sponsors
WorldWalk-Peacetour managed to survive the last one and a half years without major "activity" sponsorship. Without the help of companies dealing with trekking-equipments, energy or sport drinks, blister patches, sun protection creams, international bank accounts and debit cards, etc.
They have walked some 5200 miles (8300 km) so far, from Palić, Serbia to Dakar, Senegal. They plan to continue their walk in North America.
More Difficulties
With an expired bank card and a constantly moving "target" it became more and more difficult to deliver the support to Ferenc and István. In Africa, as a temporary measure, we used Western Union, a clumsy and expensive way to get the money to the brothers, though it was effective enough.
Of course, the team were guilty, guilty by thinking that as the miles-count increased the sponsors would show up. Well, they didn't. The support came from the municipality of Budapest, from the Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians, from the Hungarian Embassy in Morocco and from (not so) many individuals along the way and in Hungary, Serbia, Germany. And of course there were those restaurants that gave the boys a hot meal, a place to spend a few hours without worries about the next day. The Hungarian speaking community wasn't growing fast enough to sustain the project and without a proper international community-space, the worldwide community did not even exist.
The WorldWalkers have plans to visit three more continents, North and South America, Australia and Asia, before returning to Europe again.
What Are Our Goals?
We'd like to build an international community, to make the WorldWalkers well known around the world. What they have achieved so far is quite something, what they plan to achieve is almost unequaled.
The boys don't want to give up, they will fight for it, working hard to raise funds to follow their Peacetour. But they're exhausted of the often inhuman conditions, they need something to raise their spirits. If you can help, please, contact us. If you can give them publicity, do it, link to their site, to this blog, post about them in forums or on your blog.
If you work in any of the areas mentioned before (or in an airline with transatlantic, transpacific flights) and can help them, please do so. If you live near Málaga, Spain, and you think you can give them shelter, food, work, please contact us. Soon we'll try to allow small donations to be made through PayPal, too. So, if you can think of a way to help István and Ferenc, don't hesitate.
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