Donate to help video production travel expenses

Hi! My name is Matthew Dickson and I am from New Brunswick, Canada! I am fundraising to bring positive mental health programs/initiatives/stories in Canada to light and showcase them on my YouTube channel, https://www.youtube.com/@ourcountryinmind, as we need to focus on the good things working in our mental health care system, not just the things that need fixing.

Your donations would help pay for the travel expenses just starting out.

I am open to creative collaborations to make this better and reach and help more people.

I can start this filming with my smartphone. I can do some basic video editing myself. Again, I am open to collaborations with others to produce better quality video content.

I am a mental health speaker at https://www.MindAid.ca and can help pay for travel expenses through getting paid to speak (virtually preferably, but in-person where possible). Want to hire me? My fees are flexible. Or I can speak at a fundraiser (live or virtual) for your organization. Contact me if you're interested. More on my website.

I want to be doing this for a number of years. I am hoping that my speaking fees would pay for this totally, but to get things started, I am wondering if this GoFundMe could help kickstart things, including being a boost to my confidence.

I am working at a seasonal job now that will end in October 2025. I could start the tour after that.

If I get paid speaking engagements before October, and I haven't started the tour before then, I can refund the GoFundMe money to donors. I won't be taking it out of the GoFundMe account before then.

I am dying to start this trip as soon as possible and have been thinking about it for years.

I bicycled across Canada twice, once in 1992, two years before I was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and then again in 2023, after having successfully recovered from the disease (watch the film of the second bike ride here: https://www.MindAid.ca/bike-ride-film).

I have thought, how can I do this car tour with the smallest carbon footprint possible? I have considered taking public transit, rideshares, hitchhiking, bicycling, doing it all virtually somehow, but I keep coming back to doing it with a small, fuel-efficient, used car with AWD (for winter).

Besides vehicle costs, other expenses would be food and lodging. I am fine staying at campgrounds or sleeping in Walmart parking lots or using iOverLander to find free places to camp at night. In winter I would have to be at motels in the cold parts of Canada, but websites like Hopper and Hotwire could find me some discounts on motel rooms. Again, I am hoping my speaking fees could be paying for the trip.

Some motels offer $800-$1000/month rates, so I could base myself out of a motel for a month and branch out from there within a, say, 200-km radius each day, then move to another province or part of the province and do the same there. With a motel room, I could also put on virtual talks to raise funds (I can't put on virtual talks from a tent, as rain hitting the roof could be distracting to the viewers).

The thought of doing this trip scares me, but I really want to do it, and the daunting feeling it gives me is the same daunting feeling I had before both my cross-Canada bike trips. So I'm taking it as a good sign!

In the meantime if you want to donate to causes close to my heart, check out my websites https://www.MindAid.ca and https://www.DonateIndigenous.ca.