A Girl With a Vision

This is Honey Jane, a determined young woman from a remote island in the Philippines. From her small village in Mindanao the opportunities available to kids her age seemed light years away.

In fact, her home city of Misamis Oriental might well have felt like living on another planet when looking at a map of her sprawling country of islands. Manila, the main city, was more than a day away and involved a trip by car and boat. The cost of a plane ticket was out of the question.

And yet, even as a young girl, Honey set her sights on what lay beyond Mindanao. At 14, Honey hopped on a boat and came to the main island of Luzon to see what she could find in the big city. While she was living with her cousin in Angono, she learned about the local arts school, Regional School for the Arts Angono (RLSAA).

Honey wasn't an artist. At this point she had even dropped out of school and was no longer a student. But her cousin's neighbor told her about RLSAA and how they offered free tuition. The school was also committed to re-enrolling out of school youth just like Honey.

Right about this time, Bikes for the Philippines (BfP) was being introduced into the school system. And out-of-school youth had become a focal point for the program. Getting students back in school earning diplomas was exactly what this education focused program was all about.

Len Carbonnel is the mathematics teacher at RLSAA and also the BfP bike coordinator for the school. When she heard Honey's story she couldn't get her a bike fast enough...and ultimately, back in class.

It wasn't long before Honey's grades started improving. At the beginning of this year, her senior year, she was recognized for her continued improvement. She loved her school, her family of bike beneficiaries, and her fellow photographers with whom she learned, played, and enjoyed life.

At graduation, Honey was all smiles as she clutched her diploma in one hand and her newly earned bicycle in the other. This girl had taken on the world and came out on top.

But now what? She was still the girl from a poor family on the far side of the Philippines. Opportunity still felt slightly out of reach.

Thanks to Bikes for the Philippines Honey still had a home around bikes. She was so thankful for the doors BfP opened for her she wanted to give back to the program after graduation. She joined the crew and volunteered to pay it forward. She became a mechanic, trainer, and overall mentor to younger cyclists, just like she had been.

Honey continued to impress everyone around her. This was a selfless woman who never gave up. She was clearly willing to learn anything and keep trying until she excelled at it. This would surely take her far in life.

Honey found out about a scholarship to a vo-tech school that would pay for her tuition, room and board, and any added fees associated with her training. Many of these scholarships actually go unfilled due to incomplete applications. But with the help of someone Honey met through the BfP program she successfully completed the application and turned it in. And she waited.

Then just this week, Honey took her first plane ride when she flew from Misamis to Manila for an interview to be accepted into the scholarship program. And within 24 hours, Honey found out she was one of the eleven scholars accepted into the program. She will now continue her education at the Technical Training Center where she will learn Mechatronics Servicing.

And yes, she is absolutely still biking!

Pop Quiz

TRUE OR FALSE:

Joseph Tetteh is the first teacher to arrive at school every morning.

TRUE. He is now that he has a bicycle. Joseph is a teacher from Gomoa Abonko, Ghana and he received his bicycle this year from our partner Village Bicycle Project.

Joseph used to walk about five miles a day to and from work. He was often late and struggled to complete his daily assignments. He had very little time to interact with students one on one.

With his new bicycle he saves a lot of time and energy on his commute, leaving him more time to devote to his students and class work. In fact, last term, Joseph was one of the district's highest performing teachers.

MULTIPLE CHOICE:

Both Isata and Ramatullai are:

A Truant Officers
B. Bus Drivers
C. Teachers
D. All of the Above

The answer is D, All of the Above. Ramatullai (foreground) and Isata (back) both teach at Bakhita Kindergarten School in Lunsar, Sierra Leone. And they both play an active role in making sure the community youngsters are where they need to be....school!

Rumatullai uses her bike twice a week to visit the homes of children who should be in school but aren't. By making these home visits, teachers are able to get to know the parents while checking in on the students and making sure they get their butts to school!

ESSAY.

Describe the connection between a bicycle, attendance, and education- using a teacher in your example:

Isata also lives and teaches in Lunsar, 120 miles from the capital of Freetown. Until Village Bicycle Project visited Lunsar and Isata enrolled in a Learn 2 Ride program she had never been on a bicycle before.

Isata uses her bike to visit kids who aren't showing up for class. But she takes it one step further. For those truant tots living within a two mile radius of the school, don't be surprised if Isata picks you up, throws you over the top tube, and pedals you to class herself!

Isata understands the struggle these kids have living in this area, but she also knows the value of a good education. Because many of the families in the community are very poor, even the youngest members have to pull their share. Many school aged children are forced to stay home to help with chores. This allows their older siblings to help in the fields to earn more money for the family, but it also keeps the youngest kids from learning.

When Miss Isata shows up on the bike to pick up kids, she shortens the walking commute time so significantly that she is able to get some of those closer students to school a few times a week. That's one dedicated educator! Bikes + Books = SMART.

Johan: Costa Rican Farmer

Continuing our series, One Bike, Two Wheels, Four Revolutions we take a look at how one bicycle often affects up to four lives (or more!). Here we introduce a new bike owner who received a bike from our last container shipped from our Charleston location. 

But we also bring you the story of one beneficiary who benefited from the bike project, without even receiving a bicycle. Through our local partner FINCA Costa Rica we are improving the lives of small business owners and in turn entire communities. This micro-finance project works with communities to establish Community Credit Enterprises (ECC) that offer small business loans to its members. Those loans help develop local business such as cattle farming, agriculture, commerce, or services.

Jakob and Johan

Johan Leandro has spent most of his life farming the lands in his hometown of San Cristobal Norte Desamparados, San Jose Costa Rica. He provides for his family by harvesting vegetables and selling them to local vendors in the town market.

Johan asked for a $1,800 loan to increase his crop production. He will use the money to buy more seeds focusing on a better quality seed. He hopes to double or triple his yield of tomatoes, green beans, and sweet peppers.

This increase in his crops will allow him to sell more produce to vendors, bring home more money for his family, and improve their quality of life.

The loans through the ECC are made possible because of bike sales by the co-op. The bikes are received through shipments from Bikes for the World and placed by FINCA Costa Rica based on need and type of bike. The members of the receiving co-op prepare the bikes for sale and the proceeds fund the community business loans.

Jakob picked out his bike from our container donated this summer through Bikes for the World Charleston. Bikes were collected through a statewide effort among United Methodist churches in South Carolina.

In our One Bike, Two Wheels series we look at how Celia benefited from our bike donations by expanding her motorcycle repair shop. Read more here...

Celia: Motorcycle Repair Shop

Continuing our series, One Bike, Two Wheels, Four Revolutions we take a look at how one bicycle often affects up to four lives (or more!). Here we introduce a new bike owner who received a bike from our last container shipped from our Charleston location.

But we also bring you the story of one beneficiary who benefited from the bike project, without even receiving a bicycle. Through our local partner FINCA Costa Rica we are improving the lives of small business owners and in turn entire communities. This micro-finance project works with communities to establish Community Credit Enterprises (ECC) that offer small business loans to its members. Those loans help develop local business such as cattle farming, agriculture, commerce, or services.

Diana and Celia

Celia Reyes is a single mother of two. The family lives in Upala where Celia has owned and operated a motorcycle repair shop for the last four years. Celia turned to her local ECC recently for a loan to grow her repair business.

Her loan of $1,800 will help her offer a wider range of services within the shop. She can now buy more spare parts for repairs as well as to sell to customers doing their own repairs. The increase in business could lead to hiring more mechanics improving their lives as well as her own.


Little Diana is very excited about her new baby blue Schwinn her family purchased from our last container that arrived this summer via Bikes for the World Charleston. She likes all the pink accents, especially the basket and streamers. She will now be able to ride with some of the other kids in her community who also just received or already had bikes.


Through our donated bikes, rural ECCs are able to raise funds for a general pot of money that can be used by members to augment or improve their businesses that serve the communities where they live. Members who purchase the refurbish bikes are also able to improve their own lives with more affordable, reliable transportation for school, work, or errands.

Find out how Maria used her loan to improve the lives of her sheep in our One Bike, Two Wheels series...

Maria: Costa Rican Sheep Breeder

Continuing our series, One Bike, Two Wheels, Four Revolutions we take a look at how one bicycle often affects up to four lives (or more!). Here we introduce a new bike owner who received a bike from our last container shipped from our Charleston location.

But we also bring you the story of one beneficiary who benefited from the bike project, without even receiving a bicycle. Through our local partner FINCA Costa Rica we are improving the lives of small business owners and in turn entire communities. This micro-finance project works with communities to establish Community Credit Enterprises (ECC) that offer small business loans to its members. Those loans help develop local business such as cattle farming, agriculture, commerce, or services.

Maria and Yalitza

Maria Auxiliadora and her husband rely on their sheep breeding business for income. The young couple started breeding sheep over four years ago and the money they earn helps pay for their continuing education. Maria received a loan from her local ECC to help build new pens for their sheep.

Maria, seen above with one of her less-than-camera-shy sheep, lives in Grifo Alto de Puriscal in San Jose Costa Rica. This is a very beautiful region known for their coffee and tobacco farms. It is, however, also plagued by deforestation which affects production, habitat, and the climate. Over 80% of the population lives in a rural area.

Yalitza lives in a small town known as Bijagua just south of Upala. Her family purchased this pink bicycle from our shipment donated to her community this summer. The proceeds from the sale will augment the pool of money available to the community for small business loans, like the one that helped Maria's family.

Learn about Plutarco, and his pulperia and how our donated bikes helped him gear up his stock to better serve his community...

Plutarco: Costa Rican Pulperia

Continuing our series, One Bike, Two Wheels, Four Revolutions we take a look at how one bicycle often affects up to four lives (or more!). Here we introduce a new bike owner who received a bike from our last container shipped from our Charleston location.

But we also bring you the story of one beneficiary who benefited from the bike project, without even receiving a bicycle. Through our local partner FINCA Costa Rica we are improving the lives of small business owners and in turn entire communities. This micro-finance project works with communities to establish Community Credit Enterprises (ECC) that offer small business loans to its members. Those loans help develop local business such as cattle farming, agriculture, commerce, or services.

 

Emmanuel and Plutarco

Plutarco Sequeira is also from Canalete, where Maria, Tonito, and Eduviges live. Plutarco and his wife own a small convenience store known as a pulperia. For four years they have been supplying the community with items such as food and cleaning supplies. Given the remoteness of Canalete, Plutarco's store is quite popular among his neighbors. They are able to dash in and pick up items without spending a lot of time walking all the way into town.

Plutarco asked his local ECC for a $1,000 loan so that he could increase his stock with a wider variety of items. The loan allowed Plutarco to purchase more merchandise for his customers. They can now buy most of their needs right there in Canalete rather than spending time and energy walking to the next bigger town where more goods and services are sold.

Plutarco and his wife now bring in more income to support their family's needs. They also provide a valuable service to the community which helps improve their lives as well.

It's through our bike donations that these ECCs raise capital for the community loans. Little Emmanuel received this bike from our last container when his family purchased it at the community warehouse. He will soon learn to ride to ride on two wheels just like the previous owner of this bike.

One Bike, Two Wheels, Four Revolutions

This story of change begins with the bike, but it doesn't end there. Our donated bikes are helping to improve lives in so many ways in Costa Rica it's hard to keep track of them all. 

For you, that bike you donated may represent memories of fun times on the trail, easy commutes to work, or a milestone in your child's life when she took her first solo ride toward independence.

In Costa Rica that one bike might represent a ticket to improved education for a student, a job for a local mechanic, a tool for a struggling family, and a financial loan to improve a small business. 

FINCA Costa Rica has been working with Bikes for the World since 2005 to bring bicycles into small rural villages to improve transportation needs. But that wasn't the final goal of bringing bikes to these communities. Find out how your donated bikes are changing lives on two wheels and off in this short series highlighting the stories of five local entrepreneurs.

Maria Ignacia lives in a community known as Canalete in Upala, Costa Rica. She is part of the Community Credit Enterprise (ECC) that our partner FINCA Costa Rica helped establish. The ECC has over 100 members and each member has the ability to apply for a small business loan to help improve their productivity. 

Our bikes serve as the capital needed to grant these loans to members of the co-op. If an ECC requests a container or partial shipment of bicycles they prep our donated bikes for use and sell them among the community or to their neighbors. Each bike is sold for between $10-100 depending on the quality of the bike. The proceeds then get folded into this general fund for use among the community to improve their businesses, or sometimes to get a new one started.

Maria applied for a loan to help build a chicken coop to protect her main source of income for her family...egg production. She has been raising chickens and collecting eggs for the past year. She collects the eggs and sells them throughout the community to help provide for her and her family. 

FINCA helped facilitate the $1,800 loan she needed to build a small chicken coop. Her chickens are now better protected from the elements and their productivity is much improved. Maria now has more money for her family even while she works to pay back the loan to the ECC.

 

Tonito and Eduviges

Tonito and Eduviges are not related but both live in the same community as Maria, Canalete. Both received bikes from our shipment to this community in 2014. We had a chance to meet them when we visited the community that fall and even rode with Tonito through the community. 

Eduviges bought her bicycle through the co-op and she uses it to commute to work. Eduviges works on a lychee farm and used to get up at 5am to walk the two hours to the lychee field. She can now cover the same ground in less than half the time, saving time and energy.

Tonito is from a very poor family that lives in Nicaragua. They sent Tonito to Canalete to live with his grandfather in hopes of giving him a better life. The co-op members decided to give Tonito a bicycle and helmet to reward him for getting such good grades in school. 

Tonito was also on hand to help unload the bikes that were donated to the community and helped organize and prep them for sale. The sale of those bikes, including Eduviges's, may have helped provide the loan to Maria for her business.

Featured Volunteer: Margie Ligon

This month we head back down 95 South to our partners in Charleston, to recognize this month's volunteer Margie Ligon (here on the left).

Margie worked with the Youth Ministry at Philadelphia United Methodist Church in Fort Mill, South Carolina....barely....this is nearly on the North Carolina line, quite a distance from our warehouse in Charleston.

Here at home in DC, if someone had contacted us hoping to do a collection nearly 200 miles from our warehouse HQ we may have been forced to turn down the offer.   The strain on our resources may have been too great.

But when an entire United Methodist community comes together and offers a statewide challenge...you tend to pay attention and make exceptions.

And that is what brought Philadelphia UM and Margie Ligon and us together. Margie heard about Bikes for the World through a state UM conference where their Bishop offered up a challenge. He was asking each district to collect XX number of bikes (we don't know the actual number, but as Margie tells us it was not aggressive enough for her).

"I felt like my church by itself could collect what he was expecting an entire district of 66 churches to collect," thought Margie. Never one to sit back and wait, Margie cut to the chase, she contacted us directly here in DC and said, how do I get our church on your calendar?

We connected Margie with our area coordinator Paul Keefer in Charleston and the rest is sort of history.

She recruited the youth volunteers you see above to help collect and prep the used donated bikes. She also engaged the Youth Ministry in a fundraiser to help raise money to buy new bikes to supplement the donation...there was no way she was falling short of the Bishop's goal.

In fact Margie waged her own goal within their congregation, 200-300 bikes. What did Philadelphia UM end up collecting this spring? 289 bikes.

Charleston BfW bikes in Costa Rica

The youth group along with assistance from the men's group bought and assembled 114 brand new bikes to be donated among two BfW partners, CESTA in El Salvador and MiBici/FINCA Costa Rica.  But the outreach in the community also brought in 175 donated used bikes!

To quote BfW Coordinator Paul Keefer, "Margie don't mess around."

Those nearly 300 bikes were shared among two containers shipped in April and June from our location in Charleston. The first arrived in El Salvador and the second was shared among community groups in rural Costa Rica.

CESTA trained mechanic Cristian Martinez

In Costa Rica, bikes were sold to rural residents needing transportation for work and school. Money raised will help support many local businesses in the form of loans to increase production.

In El Salvador new mechanics like Cristian learn skills that will help them professionally to earn more for their families.

"I learned new skills, things I never did before, earn money, and also encouraging me to realize I could take on new challenges in other fields," Cristian Martinez.

Margie moved on to First United Methodist Church of Belmont North Carolina where she was recruited to help the Youth Ministry there. From what we've seen at BfW when Margie puts her mind, heart, and soul into something she affects positive results. We have no doubt there are great things in store for Belmont. And we hope to partner with Margie again soon.