Calvert's Calvary

A local woman will drive across Europe and Asia to help street children.

by Brian Burke

charity

ROAD RUES: This month, Megan Calvert will travel across continents in the "world's worst car" to raise money for impoverished Cambodian kids. Illustration By: Evan m. lopez (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

For Megan Calvert, merely traveling the world wasn't going to cut it anymore. While most tourists in Cambodia are mesmerized by Angkor Wat and the Royal Palace, Calvert, a 23-year-old University of Pennsylvania temporary administrative assistant, noticed another aspect of Cambodian life during a visit last year — the pervasive poverty, especially the multitudes of child beggars in the streets. Then, she met Samantha Rose while traveling in Laos.

Rose, from England, was a member of Trabant Trek, the name given to a four-month road trip that will span 20 countries later this year in an attempt to raise $300,000 to aid those street children. Trabant Trek was looking for one more member, and after traveling together for three weeks, Rose invited Calvert along for the ride.

So on July 15, Calvert and seven other travelers will depart from Zwickau, Germany, in two Trabants, Soviet-era cars with a top speed of about 60 mph. Made with a plastic frame, lacking a fuel pump and oil filter and emitting 10 times more pollution that the average Western car, the Trabant was deemed the "world's worst car" by the London Times.

"We've planned that there will be serious problems [with the cars]," says Calvert, noting that, to be on the safe side, the group will also bring a four-wheel-drive vehicle and spare Trabant engines.

Because the trekkers are footing the bill for their trip — $6,000 to $7,000 each, excluding airfare — they will sleep in tents and economize on food and supplies as much as possible. John Lovejoy, a journalist from Monterey, Calif., founded Trabant Trek last year after traveling to Cambodia. While there, he worked with M'Lop Tapang, a charity based in Sihanoukville, offering food, shelter, medical care, education and counseling for Cambodian street children and working to reunite them with their families. While most members of the group — composed of four Americans, two Brits, a Spaniard and a Hungarian — do not know each other, they are united by their love of world travel and their desire to do good in the places they visit.

"We've all been to Cambodia," Calvert said during a recent interview in University City. "We've witnessed the poverty that's there. We weren't really satisfied to continue traveling around and not really make an impact, so we decided to change that and actually do something while we're seeing the world to improve the situation in countries."

Calvert said street children are omnipresent in Cambodia; according to the Consortium for Street Children, there are more than 10,000.

"The kids really have their technique down," she said. "They'll crawl up into your lap. It's impossible not to [see them]. That's why we were all so moved by it."

The money raised be split evenly between M'Lop Tapang and Mith Samlanh, a Phnom Penh-based charity that provides food, shelter, education, vocational training and other services to homeless children. (M'Lop Tapang is likely to use the money to improve or expand its vocational center, while Mith Samlanh will probably purchase the property on which it operates to avoid eviction.)

Along the way, the group will stop at non-governmental organizations that perform similar work as their Cambodian counterparts. "The idea is that it's not going to just touch the Cambodian street children," said Calvert, an American citizen who was born in the Netherlands, and lived in several countries before attending college in Florida. She moved to Philadelphia to live with her sister and plans to return to the city after Trabant Trek.

The Trekkers also hope to enlighten young adults in the U.S. and abroad about the issues facing people in other parts of the world and encourage them to travel more internationally.

Despite their best intentions, the team still has a long way to go before reaching their fundraising goal. According to their Web site, www.trabanttrek.org, only $3,070 has been raised so far, primarily from individual donations. So, group members have been targeting their families and friends, posting fliers in their neighborhoods and are seeking corporate sponsors.

Calvert said she expects that writing blogs and posting photographs and videos during the Trek will spur more people to donate.

"Hopefully," she said, "someone with deep pockets will see us."

(editinterns@citypaper.net)