Refugees from Syria (among other Middle Eastern and African countries) have been flooding into Germany in the past months after struggling for miles and miles to reach places like the university city of Bremen.
Inspired by teammate Kareem Al Nahas, himself a refugee from Syria, and in an effort to show solidarity and support and to raise funds and awareness for these refugees the rowing team at Jacobs University in Bremen is organizing and hosting a 24 hour ergathon entitled "row2syria."
As a team, and including rowers from other local club, youth and university teams, the Jacobs University athletes will be erging a total of 3,078 km, the total distance between Damascus and Bremen, over the course of 24 hours, from 12 pm Germany time (6 am EST) on the 14th of November to 12 pm on the 15th of November.
More than 40 athletes from Jacobs University and rowing clubs around Bremen will take turns in rowing on ergometers for 24 hours in order to cover 3078 kilometers - the distance that separates Bremen from Damascus, Syria. Rowers from around the world are invited to participate remotely. Once they submit their kilometers erged on the row2syria.com website they will appear on a global heat map, which will help demonstrate the international outreach this event.
The event will be live streamed on the website row2syria.com and broadcast on other major social media platforms under the same name and using the hashtag #row2syria.
The Jacobs University athletes have also created what they hopes become a viral campaign called "The 100m Challenge." Similar to the ALS ice bucket challenge a rower completes a 100m sprint as fast as possible and then the rower nominates three other rowers to try to beat their time.
Sponsors of the row2syria event include the German National Team Eight and the Sinkovic brothers (Croatian Men's Double), as well as rowing companies such as Concept2 Germany and New Wave sportswear.
For a full profile of the athletes behind this event, see FISA's story on the event, "German rowers take on migrant crisis", visit the group's facebook page, view the Row2Syria promo clip on YouTube, or visit the event website at www.row2syria.com.