NEWS
March 29, 2010
Cognis France sponsors two student teams in 4L Trophy rally
In February, Cognis France sponsored two teams that took part in the 2010 4L Trophy long-distance rally, Europe's leading student sporting humanitarian event. The two teams, "Rose du désert" from the Polytech'Paris-UPMC engineering school and "DOM 4L" for the ISG business school in Paris, took on the major personal challenge of driving from France to Morocco to take classroom and sports equipment and medical supplies for those less fortunate than themselves. The event, which is very much in line with Cognis' sustainability strategy, was a great success, with around 78.5 tons of supplies being transported in total.
More than half of Morocco's population is illiterate and tens of thousands of children, particularly in rural areas, have no access to education or adequate medical care. The aim of the 4L Trophy rally is to help change this situation, while allowing participants to experience a real adventure in the process. All of the cars that are driven in the rally are Renault 4 (called 4L in France) models - a very popular choice among students. The first event back in 1998 only had three teams participating, but this year, 1,200 teams of two took part in the journey from Paris and Bordeaux to Marrakesh, cheered on by 20,000 spectators along the way.
An adventure for charity. Each team must carry at least 50 kilograms of classroom or medical supplies during the 6,000-kilometer journey through France, Spain and the Sahara desert. The items, including notebooks, pencils, chalk, incubators, computers and solar power systems, are then distributed by the humanitarian organization "Enfants du Désert". As a result of this year's event, around 3,000 children have benefited from access to education and better healthcare treatment.
Julie Munin from the DOM 4L team sponsored by Cognis says: "The adventure was extraordinary. It lasted five days and was really more of an orienteering exercise than a race. Using a compass and a map, we had to travel from one camp to another using the least mileage possible. We came 819th but had lots of fun."