About bicycle riders

Dear Visitor, On July 6rd 2006,we will embark on a cross Europe bike trip from Bern Switzerland to Kiev in the Ukraine some 2100 kilometres away to raise awareness for the long term effects of the Chernobyl incident. We both are adventurous in nature and have taken many adventures throughout our lives but we wanted to do more on this trip.This trip will last about 34 days and cover over 2100 km. This trek will be named in honour of FOCCUS a non profit organisation in order to raise awareness of the long term effects of the Chernobyl incident, which the UN describes as “the greatest environmental catastrophe in the history of humanity”. Thanks for your support, Chris and Emm

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Short bio of Emmanuelle Plattet

Emmanuelle ("God is with us") is the Israeli name that was given to me when I was born. I was raised with my brother in a small town in Switzerland. During my entire childhood and teenagers years I was bathed in an international environment as my family loved to travel and learn about customs of other countries. My mother was a teacher and my father a consultant for the unemployed both were in a helping profession so it's not so surprising that I chose to take an undergraduate degree in teaching.

At the age of 20, I decided to leave my country and live in Canada as an exchange student. I wanted to discover a new culture. I went to college to study English and on the last day of school I met my husband who is been on my side since then. After one year in Canada, I decided to extend my stay and study fine arts at the University of Lethbridge, Alberta. Making art had always been a passion of mine since I was a child. During my years at the university, I also developed a real passion for studying and analyzing people, how they behaved in society and the different roles they were playing. Psychology, sociology and philosophy course became as much interest as art history and painting classes.

When I heard about art therapy, I knew this was the perfect profession as it combined and supported both of my interests art and psychology but it's only when I began the programme at the Vancouver Art Therapy Institute that I understood that this profession was more than a job, it was a passion.

When I graduated from the Vancouver Art therapy Institute in April 2002, the school offered a master's level program which combined both theory and practice. Throughout this program I was able to personally experience spontaneous art and psychotherapy in order to gain a personal understanding of what it means to go through an art therapy process as well as gaining awareness and understanding about who I was as person and as a therapist.

Since I came back to Switzerland I have been working as a teacher with special needs teenagers (age 16-22) in a professional and social centre and as an art therapist in private practice. I am essentially working with adults and children who experienced traumas and losses.

Short Bio of Christian Boyko

With origins in a small Ukrainian village in the centre of Saskatchewan Canada, Christian was raised under the Ukrainian traditions by his fauther Larry Boyko and his mother Bonnie Ratushniak in a little town in Coalhurst Alberta until until an early age. Due to unavoidable circumstances, he had found himself living on his own, struggling unsuccessfully to put himself through school.

These times were tough though; a positive attitude led him to travel North America by backpack, sometimes with no more than a dollar to his name and for months at a time. By the age of 19 he had covered just about every state in America, every area in Mexico and every province in Canada except the maritimes. The backpacking trips led into early adulthood where he had met his loving wife Emmanuelle Plattet who was passing through his home town taking English as a second language. This was really the turning point in his life when he had stopped asking for help and decided to help others through education, support and compassion.

Since that time, Christian had moved to Switzerland where he presently resides and has completed a diploma of Mechanical Engineering at the University Of Applied Science Of Western Switzerland. Christian is currently working on research at the school in the field of nanotechnology and technology of surfaces and is now looking to raise the awareness of the effects of nuclear energy and the longterm effects of the Chernobyl disaster any way he can. More specifically raise awareness by using one of the greatest examples of human carelessness: Chernobyl-4 reactor.