Welcome on YVOIR                  

My name is Gerard MULLER, inhabitant in Strasbourg (Alsace) France.

I am reached of retinal degeneration since nearly 20 years. This disease develops slowly, with the present stage I see nothing any more but some shades or contours when the subject is quite enlightened. It is important me to specify my present activities by field:

The Sport

Not wishing to lock up me in a bubble of handicapped person, I try to be active as a practitioner of the sport. Thus I involve myself with:

- Ski touring and Alpine skiing, with a pilot provided with a microphone/loudspeaker which precedes me.

For Paris-Beijing, I am controlled by Michel CABART, but others control are likely to take over Michel. Indeed it is important to maintain a good relation with Michel that this one can also make bicycle alone if the desire takes some to him. Michel HELMBACHER, Pascal CHAPPUIS would take over Michel Cabart then.

For my practice of the bicycle, I have an important network of pilots. Thus in the area of Mulhouse (Southern of Alsace) with Dominique KOHLER and other friends we practise VTT in the Vosges mountains with my tandem. I also form part of the A.S.E.S. (Sports association of Electricity of Strasbourg), affiliated with the F.F.C.T. (French Federation of Bicycle touring) where with Bernard MEYER we practise the bicycle touring with my tandem.

I have thus create a true network based on the cycling sport. This network is important in the relation helper / helped. Indeed if one of my pilots is not available, the network enables me to be addressed to someone else, which allows in all serenity the pilot of saying no and attenuates the concept of dependence. Indeed it is necessary that the relation helper / helped stays as a relation of pleasure and not a relation of constraint.

- Walk in average and high mountain with a guide, etc

The sport is important for the body and mind :

-the consequence of my blindness is a more important sedentarisation, with its disadvantages. It is necessary for me thus to move and practise a sport.

-the consequence of the handicap is also a desociabilisation and a bad image of oneself. The sporting practice cures for these negative purposes and allows a better regard of oneself.

Professional Life

I was a pharmacist in Alsace, in Merkwiller-Pechelbronn and my wife also pharmacist in Niederbronn-lese-Bains. I stopped there my job five years ago, the  most pleasant dimension in my profession was the contact with the patients. I made a point nevertheless of keeping an occupation, I am owner with my wife of the company “Paramedical der Thermes” located at Haguenau and have just created one second company “Paramedical de la Plaine” located at Sainte Croix en Plaine in the south of Colmar.
The object of these companies are the sale equipments to improve mobility of  and confort of handicapped people.

Family life

I make a point here particularly of thanking my wife Anny for his support and his comprehension like my children and grandchildren. They thus help me to assume my handicap in my everyday life but also at the time of the Paris-Beijing Cycling Tour which will put our resistances to hard test during its 12800 Km.

Community life

1. ADRET

It is certainly the most therapeutic activity for me. Because I never had of leaning associative in the past. Since 1993 two people helped me to discover this new field of life. The first, Jean KUHN reached as me of pigmentary retinite (Retinitis pigmentosa) was already blind in this time, its enthusiasm and its joy in life given another indication of the felt handicap and another myself. Jean Kuhn brutally disappeared some years later.

The second person is Jose SAHEL, currently Professor of medicine and researcher at the Institute of the Vision in Paris, at the time aggregate young person of ophthalmology within the CHU ( University Hospital) of Strasbourg. With Jean we were subjugated by its personality and its scientific project:
-the transplantation of photo-receiving cells.
Jean and me let us have creates association ADRET (Association for the Development of Research on the Retina and its Transplantation). This association had a single goal: to support the research project of Jose SAHEL. In order to collect funds for Research, we made multiple operations, of which:

- presence on the Christmas market of Strasbourg with the largest crown of Advent of the World,

- organization of the first Euro-Tandem Tour,  Strasbourg - Luxembourg - Brussels - Berlin - London… realized with our friends of the European Parliament of Strasbourg.
They had very like objective to make known the importance of the retinal diseases to the large-public.

With the Lions Club we organized more than one hundred conferences for the promotion of the project of Jose Sahel and information on the importance of the retinal diseases. It is like our friends of Lions Club and their Foundations “Sight First” enabled us to collect 2,5 Million Francs. The sale of glasses to see the solar Eclipse of 1999, the concerts with Electricity of Strasbourg and its Harmony and much other demonstrations enabled us to support the project of Jose Sahel.

This implication with dimensions of the teams of research were a therapy for Jean and me, we did not undergo any more the disease but we had the conviction to help to fight it.

ADRET was dissolved at the time of the departure of the team of Jose Sahel the new location in Paris.

I also took part in the Cyclocœur Tour to support the collection of funds intended for the handicapped people.

2. ACTIONS IN BRAZIL

In 2004 I was contacted by Edwige Lepelletier from the French association BRINCADEIRA which put me in contact with the Foundation Da Caminho located at ALAGOÏNAS in Bahia in Brazil. This foundation occupies and manages a school named “ECAI” located in a underprivileged district of a town of 200.000 inhabitants where reign an important violence and a high rate of unemployment. This school has a characteristic, in the same place are provided education for 80 deaf persons, 40 blind children or partially-sighted persons, 20 children having serious social problems like 4 deaf and simultaneous blind children.

I went there three years of continuation (2004, 2005, 2006) with three objectives:

-to develop the activity of locomotion,
- the AVJ (Assistance on the Day Life)
-introduction of sport practice for this handicapped children.

Very quickly, with the Foundation C CAMINHO, we decided to create the first Bahia-Tandem-Tour in 2005. Thus seven tandems controlled by deaf children of the school assisted of seven blind children or partially-sighted persons went from Alagoïnas to El Salvador de Bahia. This tour of 200 km was done over one week. See Brincadeira (Bahia - El Salvador Tandem-Turn)

It had in first a teaching objective, thus 20 handicapped children did what none of their valid camarades did: to go to the El Salvador capital on bicycle. Majority of them, are not knowing El Salvador, not having never slept apart from their bed and not having never made ridind a bicycle. Compared to their camarades they had changed statute: they had become heroes. This tour was also the occasion, at the time them stages, to meet other children having other handicaps or problems. These meetings were moments of festival, thus the young blind children gave concerts of flute, the young deaf persons some theatral representations, and the  mental handicapped people a representation of Capuéra.

The second objective for Do Caminho was to find funds locally in Brazil. This was made possible thanks to the presence of Medias and with the effectiveness of the network of Lions Club. This Bahia-Tandem-Tour takes since place annually in September henceforth.

My next objective with Alagoïnas will be to create an early diagnostic center for  ophthalmologic diseases.

Copyright : BG-WEB-CONCEPT

Contact Webmaster

Concept & Création Bernard GALLAT