KayaClean is not an NGO, not an association and not a charity. It is an online community of users (cleaners) who are proud to show where they have been doing clean-up actions.
The website is to be created by crowdfunding in 2018. Funds should come by private donors or brands of paddle sports who give money (or equipment to be sold) during the crowdfunding campaign. Extra funding will be kept for future maintenance of the site and basic administration.
Depending on the goal reached or surpassed, it will allow to have the website in better quality (user experience), different languages and hopefully a responsive design to work on smartphones and tablets.
History of KayaClean.
In April 2012, Belgian adventurer and explorer Louis-Philippe Loncke launched the first KayaClean clean-up action near Liège in Belgium. A local kayak club lent a few kayaks to a group of teenagers who dropped out of school to go on the river. Louis-Philippe and a local kayak veteran champion and guide explained them how to paddle in the morning and in the afternoon they navigated upstream the Low-Ourthe river along the banks to collect trash. Over 100kg of trash was removed out of water.
Louis-Philippe Loncke was made aware of the importance of water in the early nineties when he was shown the fact that many people in poor countries have no access to clean water. When he started scuba diving in 2002 he started to remove trash he found on the bottom of the Oceans.
He picked up kayaking in 2009 and did another daytrip in 2010. He was in shock he could see so much trash in the canal and showing the pollution was the message he delivered to the public during his first kayak expedition around Belgium. In other expeditions he went down the Vistula river in Poland, made the world first kayak circumnavigation of Lake Titicaca and rafted or kayaked for 6 days the upper Rio Marañon with Rocky Contos. He also kayaked around the lagoon of the remote Clipperton Island. The island is so remote and the beaches are filled with plastic or other pollution.
Thanks to his modest contribution but great awareness raised about water pollution, he got several awards. In 2011, Louis-Philippe became an ambassador for the Roots and Shoots program of the Jane Goodall Institute. In 2012, he was a torchbearer for the London Olympic Games. Dr. Jane Goodall knighted him in the European Parliament in 2014.
Louis-Philippe Loncke was made aware of the importance of water in the early nineties when he was shown the fact that many people in poor countries have no access to clean water. When he started scuba diving in 2002 he started to remove trash he found on the bottom of the Oceans.
He picked up kayaking in 2009 and did another daytrip in 2010. He was in shock he could see so much trash in the canal and showing the pollution was the message he delivered to the public during his first kayak expedition around Belgium. In other expeditions he went down the Vistula river in Poland, made the world first kayak circumnavigation of Lake Titicaca and rafted or kayaked for 6 days the upper Rio Marañon with Rocky Contos. He also kayaked around the lagoon of the remote Clipperton Island. The island is so remote and the beaches are filled with plastic or other pollution.
Thanks to his modest contribution but great awareness raised about water pollution, he got several awards. In 2011, Louis-Philippe became an ambassador for the Roots and Shoots program of the Jane Goodall Institute. In 2012, he was a torchbearer for the London Olympic Games. Dr. Jane Goodall knighted him in the European Parliament in 2014.
Since then, and especially in 2015, the Jane Goodall Institute Belgium organized several KayaClean actions with different groups especially international American companies. Yearly, they have a Community Day where employees go and do a good action. They chose to have fun in the outdoors and remove trash out of the Lesse river.
In 2015, Louis-Philippe decided to make KayaClean a world wide website for the community of cleaners. He decided to extend to all paddle sports and started planning a crowdfunding campaign to raise funds and create awareness for the website.
