Tour de Timor

Press release:

For more information, please contact us via madison@etan.org, 608-241-2473 or visit www.aideasttimor.org.

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The 16th annual “Tour de Timor” sister-city bike ride will roll on Sunday, May 22, starting at 1:00 pm at the WORT Block Party (on Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, just off Capitol Square) in Madison.

Tour de Timor participants will ride around Lake Monona to raise funds for community projects in Ainaro, Madison’s official sister-city in the Southeast Asian island nation of Timor-Leste (East Timor).

For a $25 registration fee, Tour de Timor participants will receive an organic, union-made T-shirt.  Participants are also encouraged to collect pledges.  More information and pledge sheets can be found at www.aideasttimor.org.  (The rain date for the ride is Sunday, June 5, at the same time and location.)

The highest pledge-raisers will receive prizes from Tour de Timor co-sponsors, including Family Farm Defenders, Revolution Cycles, Machinery Row Bicycles, Mother Fool’s Coffeehouse, Rainbow Bookstore, People’s Bakery, Planet Zebulon, The Progressive magazine, Bandung restaurant, Just Coffee, EVP Coffee and Lakeside Press.  Madison’s community radio station, WORT 89.9 fm, is welcoming the event.

The first Tour de Timor ride was held in August 1999, as the Timorese people prepared to vote in a United Nations-organized referendum on their future.  They overwhelmingly voted for independence, bringing an end to a brutal, quarter-century-long Indonesian military occupation.  As the Indonesian military left Timor-Leste, they destroyed an estimated 70 percent of its infrastructure.  The Madison chapter of the East Timor Action Network (ETAN-Madison) established a sister-city relationship with Ainaro, to help the rural community rebuild.  That work continues today.

Madison has a long history of solidarity with Timor-Leste.  In 2001, Madison and Ainaro formed the first official sister-city relationship between U.S. and Timorese communities.  During the month of May 2016, the Madison-Ainaro Sister City Alliance will showcase pictures, products and facts about Ainaro and Timor-Leste in the first floor display case in the City-County Building (210 Martin Luther King Jr Blvd).

Previous Tour de Timor bike rides -- now held the Saturday closest to Timor-Leste's independence day, May 20 -- have raised thousands of dollars for maternal and child health programs in Ainaro, for the Madison visit of two Ainaro community leaders and sustainable agriculture groups.