A Lion's Pride

Welcome to the 1k Club. This year Bikes for the World welcomes a new thousand bike partner... Glenwood Lions Club.

BfW now has 10 community partners whose collections have added more than 1,000 bikes to our program over the last 13 years. In fact between them, they have collected and donated over 18,000 bikes around the world. That's a lot of bikes and even more lives improved.

While our official partner is the Glenwood Lions Club, this project is quite popular among the Leos at Glenwood Middle School. What's a Leo? Lions Clubs sponsor their younger counterparts in an effort to instill great qualities in the youth of their community. Leadership, Experience, Opportunity defines what being a LEO is all about.

Throughout the year the Leos take part in several Lions led projects. Donating books is big. Glenwood Leos participated in bringing books to schools, seniors, and the community. But the bike collection is one of the most popular. Getting to use the tools and a little elbow grease (or getting grease on their elbows, as the case may be) is fun for kids of every age.

This is a project that really helps pair up the Lions and Leos and gets them working together toward a common goal. Lions Larry Orwig and Harrison Morson have been fixtures at this event held every May.

Larry works throughout the year collecting bikes in his truck and ferrying them over to the school for the kids to use their new mechanic skills. Both Harrison and Larry work with the kids mentoring them and showing them all the tricks to break a rusty bolt free.

Bikes for the World even made a special trip up there in the fall of 2015 to work with the Leos outside their spring event. They had collected so many bikes we had to make an early pick up. And we wanted to give the students a chance to work on the bikes.

"I think this is a great partnership between us, the Lions and the Leos. I really saw the girls in particular empowered when we handed them a pedal wrench and showed them how to use it. Getting all young people familiar with tools and using them is one of the aspects of my job I enjoy the most. If this work encourages them to learn more about bikes and makes them confident enough to tackle a flat tire on the road that's super!" says Outreach Coordinator Yvette Hess who has worked directly with Glenwood since 2012.

And at Glenwood, they just keep upping their effort.

Way back in 2012 the crew donated about 50 bikes.

The following year they doubled that number. In 2015 they almost doubled it again, turning in 180 bikes. From then on they have been on a roll. In 2016 the Lions Club joined up with Alpha Ridge waste transfer station and that spring hit an all time high contributing 245 bikes. Many of those bikes last year were donated to our partner in Barbados Pinelands Creative Workshop.

This year their bikes will be split between Kenya and Barbados and were loaded the following week after their May 6th collection. During that collecting the bikes kept rolling in. Through the recycling effort, random pick ups, and drop offs at the school, Glenwood filled our truck with 319 bikes (in fact we made two pick ups there throughout the year!).

So yeah, we honored their cruise into our 1k realm. They actually crushed it. They are now moving on trying to catch our 3k leaders.

While their numbers continue to be impressive, it's really the impact they are having on our partners around the world, on the earth through recycling efforts, and in their communities and even families that really stand out.

A story that came out of the 2012 collection at Glenwood stays with us even today. Here Megan and Brandon Witt donated a brand new bicycle they bought with money they saved themselves. It was a lesson mom Robin, wanted to teach her kids about the importance of giving back. It's a lesson we continue to share today.

That blue BMX bike was loaded the same day and traveled all the way to Africa to a put a smile on a little boy's face in Ghana.