The idea

The birth of the idea to set up an expedition, started last year during a journey of Bogdan through Africa. While traveling through Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burundi, Bogdan became very enthusiastic to set up a humanitarian project in Africa from a point of view of a student. How the expedition should look like wasn't really clear, but when Bogdan found out about the 33rd Lustrum of the Technical University in Delft where he studies with the special focus that this Lustrum has on Africa and sustainable technology, two ideas were blended together to form one plan: To set up an expedition form Delft to Cape Town in South-Africa, as a part of the University's festivities, where projects concerning sustainable technology would be visited on the route. Later the idea to promote sustainable technology in the Netherlands was added to the goal and the expedition was named AfricAlive.

Bogdan took his idea to Doenan and invited him to join him in this expedition. From the first moment, Doenan was very enthusiastic about it and together they worked out the plans and from that moment the preparations of the expedition started. It become clear very quickly that Bogdan and Doenan wanted to set up this expedition in a large and professional manner and to do that, the starting point was to find a big legitimate partner to have a base to work from in setting up this expedition. Of course this foundation had to be laid in cooperation with the TU Delft and to have the expedition as a part of the Lustrum. Bogdan spoke to different representatives of the TU Delft about his plan to try to convince them of the idea. After 2 months of lobbying, the Lustrum committee gave the green light for the expedition and AfricAlive found its first sponsor and partner.

De road of the preparations was still very long though and the idea grew by the day, so it was time to put in place a good team. Bogdan invited Alexander and Hans to be part of the team and later on Robbert-Jan became part of AfricAlive. Because filming of the projects and reporting on them in the Dutch media is a very important integral part of the expedition, it was crucial to find a cameraman/woman to join us on the expedition. The team of AfricAlive invited several people form the world of media for an interview to find the last team member of this expedition. The preparations were already ongoing and most of the boys already had a full time commitment to the expedition. Uudzuu became the last member of AfricAlive and with these 6 men, the team worked extremely hard for several moths to get everything in place for the start of the expedition on 8th of June 2007.

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