At City Hall, Mooney will kick-off the Green Leaf campaign, which is a grassroot effort designed to drum up local support by painting personalized green leafs on his rowboat starting at ten dollars. In December, Mooney hopes to make a second attempt to row the Spirit of Zayed from Senegal to New York's Brooklyn Bridge (8,000 miles) to help save the planet and stop the spread of AIDS - a first. Afterwards he plans to row from Djibouti to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (3,000 miles).
During his row, Mooney aims to encourage 1 million people to get tested for AIDS in the US, provide 1 million people in sub-Saharan Africa access to anti-retroviral medicine and plant 1 million trees worldwide. Mooney has lost one brother to AIDS and another is living with the virus.
Mooney, a devout Catholic and college public affairs officer, has set-up a website to substantiate the birth of his relationship with the people of United Arab Emirates and the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al Nahyan. "Sheikh Zayed was against the use of Islam for extremism and advocated patience, humility, taking action and persistence. The UAE continues to be a strong ally in the war on terrorism and they are also a substantial consumer of American goods, technology and services", Mooney said.
Mooney has raised half of the $100,000 needed for his mission, mostly from in-kind contributions from across America. The rowboat was design by Naval Architect, Doug Frolich and Composite Yacht LLC is the boat builder. Enlist for Goree Challenge and put your green leaf on the rowboat, visit goreechallenge.com.
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