Two Télécom Bretagne engineering students, Jérôme Clier and Guillaume Buchou (year of 2010), along with an engineering student at Centrale Nantes and a Brest-based shopkeeper recently formed an association to combine a trip around the world with the fight against Muscular Dystrophy. This initial project for an 18-month period, including a round the world trip, should enable the new association, called Frontières Imaginaires, to make a name for itself and sustain its action.

The Frontières Imaginaires team around the logo of the association. From left to right: Matilda, Jerome, Nicolas and Guillaume (G. Buchou photo credit).

Frontières Imaginaires wants to develop solidarity-based vision of travel. The association was founded on three premises:
• many people travel more  and more around the world in the process of making trips around the world which are based on solidarity;
• apart from the AFM (French Association against Myopathies, see inset below),  organizations in the fight to cure neuromuscular diseases in emerging countries are underdeveloped or absent;
• people with neuromuscular disorders find it extremely difficult to travel “backpacker style”; however, it is not impossible, as evidenced by the sponsor of the association’s first project, Marie Claude, 52, who suffers from muscular dystrophy and who has been passionate about travel since the age of 20.

Create a group of solidarity-based globetrotters

Frontières Imaginaires aims to create a group of solidarity-based globetrotters, from all backgrounds, who want to discover the world through projects supporting the fight against muscular dystrophy in an international context. Ultimately, the projects carried out in the name of the association must come under one of two categories: either to provide humanitarian assistance in the development of associations fighting against neuromuscular diseases abroad, or to take up the challenges facing people with myopathies in a remote corner of the world.

Travel like a backpacker, go beyond disability

Frontières Imaginaires World Tour team.

The association’s first project will proceed in two phases. The first phase of the project is a world tour of 14 months from Paris, October 10, 2011, eastward, to explore Asia and South America and finally South Africa (see photo 2). This world tour, done by the four founders of the association (see photo 1), provides an opportunity to visit twelve associations engaged in the fight against muscular dystrophy, before the return date, December 20, 2012. The second phase of the project is a trip lasting about a fortnight co-organized with four people with muscular dystrophy. This expedition will take travelers to a corner of the world to show that it is still possible to travel as a backpacker and to go beyond disability.