OUR CHALLENGES:
STRENGTHENING & RECOLLING SLA RESEARCH FUND
When we decided to leave everything in France we wanted the adventure that we were about to live to have a meaning, not only for us: we also wanted to make the others enjoy it, all those who for one reason or another do not have the chance to make the same choices as us.
Using travel and social networks to raise awareness and raise funds for ALS research was our way of trying to have even a tiny positive impact on our scale. We created Entre2Pôles and met representatives of ARSLA (the main association working against SLA in France) a few months before leaving the country. As a result, we created the #SLAchallenges, sporting challenges that we would achieve throughout our journeys to make talk about this always incurable disease. And finally, we put online a fund raising intended to funding research.
A year later, we crossed 10 countries and made almost a hundred #SLAchallenges. Travellers, businesses, sports clubs, families, brides and grooms, hospitals and schools joined us by publishing their own #SLAchallenges video on the networks. We have collected several thousand euros and today, this fight like this fund-raising are still in progress.
What's the SLA?
SLA, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, is a little known disease whose subject is often avoided. Maybe you know her under the name of « Charcot disease » (from the name of the French neurologist who first described it in 1865). In the United States, you will hear the name of Lou Gehrig, famous baseball player who died in 1941. But it will probably be more telling to quote you the (surprising) example of the famous Stephen Hawking, this brilliant astrophysicist who managed against any medical advice to live 52 years with this disease.
The life expectancy of the sick can reach 3 to 5 years. It's a neurodegenerative disease whose cause is still unknown. Its process is complex, but one could try to explain it by saying that ALS is the progressive "death" of motor neurons: a progressive paralysis the whole body also affecting phonation, swallowing, breathing and causing death. One of the characteristics of ALS is that outside the motor she respects the other functions of the nervous system: intellectual functions are preserved throughout the disease.
By the great handicap it generates and the fatality it induces, ALS is a test for both the sick and their loved ones. It is difficult to diagnose and still impossible to cure, even 150 years after its discovery and hundreds of thousands of cases worldwide (6,000 in France). Associations like ARSLA are working tirelessly to Raising awareness to this disease and collect donations for research. They have succeeded in recent years, notably with an advertising campaign rewarded at the Cannes festival in 2019, to finally put a serious spotlight on this disease. In 2019, almost EUR 1 million have been donated through ARSLA for research. That same year, the researchers had reported encouraging progress, although there will be a long way to go.
- ARSLA ASSOCIATION IN FIGURES -
ZOOM ON...
#SLACHALLENGES
Having grown up both in the world of sport, we have always had in us this love of challenge, the one that pushes to surpass and teaches that with a lot of envy and work, Some things become possible. It is this conviction and the desire to help that gave birth to our project: a sporting challenge realized all over the world.
"Green Sally up, green Sally down..."
At first sight, the simple words of a Moby song, but if you add pumps and squats to realize in rhythm, things come much harder! The principle is simple: from the first "...DOWN "from the song we go down. You only get up when you hear "... UP " From then on it's us against the 3'30 of the song, it's the fight of the SLA: our body against time.
THE PRESS IN PARLE
You're a newspaper, a radio, a TV channel, a company, an association, an influencer, you're CNN?
Contact us If you want to bring visibility to this cause or join in this fight. Besides, we're nice.
2022 - OBJECTIVE
June 2022, it's 00:20. Maxime finishes a race on foot 100 km in Brittany. As we pass the finish line, we know: this final challenge will mark a new stage in our fight against the SLA.
In this idea of traveling for the first time such a long distance, we said that this would be the right time to ask our community and our partners in a last effort.
The principle was « Simple » Ask people who support our projects to encourage Maxime to run as far as possible by committing to pay a sum of money based on the number of kilometres travelled!
After 12 hours of effort and 5 SLA Challenge carried out on the entire course, these are more than 3 000 € which have come to add to the 9,000 previous ones, carrying our pool solidarity to 12 000 € , thus exceeding our main objective !
A big thank you to all those who have worked on this initiative, hoping that it will call for just as beautiful in the future 🖤
