Art Matters

For any young person today, simple every day life in school can be emotionally draining. There are pressures from family to do well in school and get good grades. There are pressures from peers to fit in. There are pressures from strangers who may bully or demean students in a trend that seems to be growing daily. Finding the space to focus on learning can feel like an unattainable chore.

Rodney Grant helped establish PCW

For young residents in the community known locally in Barbados as 'The Pines', life, itself, can be a challenge.  Add to the above, living in poverty, not getting enough to eat, watching mom and dad struggle to find good jobs and you might find a student who has given up before they've even tried.

Pinelands Creative Workshop (PCW) is a community organization working to overcome these challenges and improve the lives of students in their neighborhood.  PCW was created to ease that burden decades ago and continues to thrive today after constantly growing and reinventing themselves to keep up with the changing stresses and challenges on the students within their community.

The overall goal of PCW is to provide compensatory education to vulnerable persons in communities across Barbados as a viable pathway out of poverty. Only a community organization can use an initiative like BfW to do so much with so little.

Through the sales of our donated bikes, PCW is able to run a full service bike shop, employ mechanics, and raise funds to help support projects within their program which focus on using art education to improve lives. While Pinelands Creative Workshop may seem like nothing more than a cool place to hang out with friends after school, what this organization provides to its young participants goes much deeper than that. And goes far beyond a bike simply providing transportation.

On the surface, PCW seems to be offering dance classes, music lessons, and theatre opportunities in addition to their academic mentoring and supplemental education. And that's exactly it.

To 8 year old Danisha, all she knows is she likes dancing at PCW after school and hanging out with her friends. But deep down even she knows it's more than that. Through dance, she told Outreach Coordinator Yvette Hess, "I learned how to be myself." At eight.

What we see PCW providing is a working classroom: Expression. Collaboration. Focus. Confidence. Accountability. Responsibility. Those same art based after school extra curricular activities that Danisha loves so much are critical to childhood development and will continue to serve her, and her community, well throughout life.

PCW has reshaped elements our our mission at Bikes for the World, to enhance lives through better transport, and expanded it to better fit the needs of their community by offering a less tangible but equally important development platform for youth. And we are thrilled to see them adapt our program to serve their community...that's really what we are about, improving lives. 

Doing that through the arts is genius, especially in a tourist-centric nation that relies on the performing arts as a way of life. The arts also strengthen problem solving and critical thinking. Students learn to make choices and understand the value of their participation in the overall productions. They learn about sharing responsibility and how perseverance can pay off. They take pride in the end result after putting in the hard work it took to get there. They are developing a routine for success.

Art encourages young people to express their thoughts and ideas in a variety of ways. It opens lines of communications and brings topics that are relevant to them to the forefront. It encourages strangers to open up and learn from someone who is exactly like them or a polar opposite.

Art introduces the idea of peaceful resolution to the classroom, dance hall, stage, or recital room. Most of all art brings inclusion into a closed circle. It opens, embraces, and beats like a drum or a heart. Art lays the foundation for understanding, acceptance, and compassion. Just like the bike, art brings people together and transports them to a better place. 

Boys Will Be Boys

Pinelands Creative Workshop (PCW) began as a way to engage and educate some of the most under-served residents of Barbados. Situated on the border of the Pinelands community, PCW was poised to make a difference and change lives for the better.

PCW's initial efforts mainly included a focus on theatre and the arts. In this way, the organization was able to enlist the community to participate in productions while exploring topics of the day in a unique and engaging way.

Since its beginning in the seventies, PCW has undergone many transformations over the decades to include skills and life training programs for many residents in the community. They now offer computer classes, self defense classes, career preparedness programs, life skills activities, and summer youth camps in addition to their original focus on arts and sports.

In 2005, PCW added bike mechanics to that growing list of training options. By partnering with Bikes for the World, PCW also added a little capital to the program. After fixing up our donated bikes, PCW sold refurbished bikes at a low cost to the community which helped fund their growing Meals on Wheels program.

More notably, this newly added bike program helped make PCW much more relevant by adding an important development platform for youth. Boys were lining up to join this program, earn a little pocket money, learn about bikes, and gain experience using tools while learning a skill.

Zidane, Michausa, Nathaniel, and Stephen

Zidane, Michausa, and Nathaniel joined the bike program a couple years ago. They are trained by Ronald and Stephen who see the program has much more to offer than just revenue generated to help fund programs:

There are softer and more long term benefits for the young men we work with. They learn about respect for people and property, about managing time and finishing a job in the best way they can, they learn about conflict resolution and they learn to take pride in their work and after all the work is done they feel proud to see a person walk out with a bike that they worked on.

Danny at work

Before boys had this outlet at PCW, Ronald says he often saw fights breaking out between the adolescents. Now they can direct their energy into something more productive. 

Danny’s mom was especially impressed with her son’s enthusiasm and dedication during the time he was with the bicycle initiative; she confessed that he was excited about going to work and that his new-found responsibility infected the rest of his life. He was more active at home and around the house and he was ready and willing to take on new tasks. It was like the experience matured him, he was a “serious” young man.

From Wheels To Meals

Supporting diverse programs is one of the ways Bikes for the World is able to affect so many lives around the world in a multitude of ways. Our bike project provides affordable transportation, creates jobs, encourages education, and supports adult and youth programs beyond just bikes.

One of our main criteria for partners receiving bikes is that the project or organization is sustainable. Because our donated bikes are shipped 'as is' many of them are in need of repair and/or parts when they arrive. A majority of our partner organizations provide training and actual mechanic jobs to disadvantaged community members who fix and maintain these donated bikes, creating jobs to help support their families.

Bikes are then sold at a low cost to residents within the community who are in need of valuable transportation. Money generated through the program helps support the mechanics and project. More often than not, the surplus revenue is reinvested in the organization which in turn benefits the entire community.

In Barbados, our bike program is helping to support many aspects of Pinelands Creative Workshop. Funds generated through the bike project have helped offset administrative and program costs within the organization. PCW itself focuses on positive change within the community of Pinelands. Programs focused on the arts such as theatre, dance and music provide an educational, creative outlet for youth after school. Additionally, PCW offers career training, professional and undergraduate education, and general support to its struggling neighbors.

Sophia Greaves-Broome, Special Projects Director with the Marcus Garvey Resource and Development Centre (MGRDC) the Training Arm of the PCW states, “The bicycle project has allowed the MGRDC to deliver quality and relevant programs at the community level responding to expressed needs of over 3000 residents who can be categorized as either unemployed, underemployed, unskilled, vulnerable and/or living in poverty.  Furthermore the injection of support has added considerable social value to the community and the empowerment of beneficiaries."

One such program supported through the bike project in Barbados is the Meals on Wheels program, which provides meals to elderly, shut-ins, and disabled individuals in and around the Pine. With funds generated by bicycle sales, PCW is able to pay cooks, purchase disposable food containers, and contribute to the overall cost of running the vehicles to collect and provide food.

Shelly Durant-Forde, Financial Manager of PCW had this to say, “While funding is received through other projects the bicycle project is the only project that has been consistent and dependable . Many days we have been able to provide lunch, bus-fare, gas, school books or some small contributions to persons in the community who had nowhere else to turn but the doors of the Workshop.  Without the bicycle project this would be impossible."

Educating and Uplifting a Community Through Art

The Pinelands Creative Workshop program in Barbados was one of the original Bikes for the World partners. We started shipping to this organization in May of 2005 when we first formed as BfW. Since then we have donated over 11,000 bikes to help support the efforts of this community focused group. This month we will load our 24th container of bikes for Barbados.

 “We wanted theatre to be able to reflect the issues of our people. We were using theatre for a purpose – to educate, entertain and inform," Rodney Grant Director Pinelands Creative Workshop, Barbados.

Pinelands Creative Workshop (PCW) was first established in the mid 70s and has grown and adapted over the years to meet the needs of the community it serves. That community, affectionately known as "The Pines", lies two miles east of Bridgetown, the capital and largest city on the island. 

While Barbados itself is the wealthiest of the east Caribbean islands, the Pinelands is actually the largest low income community in Barbados. The community consists of mainly under-skilled young people and is characterized by high levels of unemployment. At one time, The Pines was viewed by many as a community with no future.

PCW was created to introduce a creative and productive outlet to a community mired in this negative perception. Phase one focused on cultural productions aimed at teaching and engaging the community.  Over the years they added sporting activities and eventually morphed into an even more productive organization by expanding their range of activities, which included the bike workshop BfW now supports. 

Today's PCW operates around its strong cultural development work which in turn provides cultural, commercial, economic, and social skills training to the community it continues to serve.

Rodney Grant has been with PCW for over 40 years now and was instrumental in its evolution into the organization it is today. By first telling the story of how Rodney came to PCW is essentially outlining the program's first success story.

“I would never forget one Sunday morning when Michael Newton caught me. He used to go and fix tyres and he saw me and told me to come with him. He put me on his motorcycle and took me down to Roebuck Street to fix some tyres with him. From then he developed an interest in me and used to let me tag along with him wherever he went. By tagging along with Michael, I kind of shifted my focus from doing negative things and tried to focus on community development and planning,” Grant said.

Michael ran the Pinelands Social Cultural Youth Group and reached out to a young Rodney who was on the cusp of straying down the wrong path. Michael signed Rodney up for the soccer team and introduced him to the positive change outreach could have on a community.

Rodney incorporated this into a life calling and helped form PCW a few years later. Through its original focus on dance, theatre, and arts, PCW has educated and uplifted a community in desperate need of hope. The organization continued to grow over the years to expand education programs, provide micro-business training, and even generate employment. The Pinelands community continues on its path of recovery using the resources from its uplifted residents thanks to the efforts of Rodney and Pinelands Creative Workshop.

Learn more about how the bike project supports this growing effort in Barbados...

We Did It!

In the past four weeks Bikes for the World handled close to 10,000 bikes. It wasn't so long ago when 10,000 bikes was an entire year's work! But I did say handled, which includes shipping as well as receiving. So basically in less than a month we filled up a warehouse then emptied it back out again. Really.

 You may recall how excited we were to move into our new location more centrally located in Arlington. We had big plans. More volunteers, another volunteer day, dual shipments....We loved the idea of having electric and restrooms. We'd be Metro accessible. We had a covered dock and multiple doors...

We took possession of the facility in late April and immediately started bringing collection bikes into this warehouse. In fact our Operations Manager, Nick Colombo loved driving right into our storage location so much, he began bringing ALL of our bikes here, even the ones from Maryland (which would normally go to King Farm).

This new warehouse was going to make this year's DICK'S Sporting Goods promotion run as smoothly as a high performance track bike! We were expecting over 5,000 bikes from the national retailer and we were ready.

We hired a part time staff. Devised a busy but reliable weekly unload schedule and in turn a comfortable, nicely paced shipping schedule. We put out the call for volunteers and started scheduling corporate groups to help us load.

And the bikes came pouring in, as we predicted. In just two weeks, our warehouse was filling up fast. We had decided not to ship earlier in the month to focus on bringing in, unloading, and processing bikes. In hindsight, this might have been a mistake.

What that meant was, we expected over 6,000 bikes in this location alone, counting the local collections in addition to the nationally collected DICK'S bikes. No problem, we had this warehouse until at least the end of July, probably longer.

May 31, 2013.
This is when we got the call. Even though we anticipated a late summer move, our lease with Vornado was month to month. And there was movement on the property. The grocery store chain moving into this location wanted to be in by 2015 and they still had to tear down the old BMW place we called home for a month.
We had to move. 3,000 bikes. In a month.

Luckily the warehouse right next store was empty and Vornado offered it to us as an alternative. We stopped bringing bikes into 1200 S Eads immediately and for the next three weeks we brought the remaining DICK'S bikes into the adjacent warehouse 1420. We also diverted two trucks to Chicago's Working Bikes and St. Louis Bicycle Works...there was plenty to go around.

This would ease our stress to ship in July because we would have the use of this new location through the end of the year. But we had 4,500 bikes sitting next door and they had to be gone by July 1st. Time to rework the shipping schedule!

We started June 14-15 with a container for Barbados. The corporate group from PBS did such a great job loading it we actually had to cancel the group coming the next day because we didn't have enough left to do. This made us rethink the rest of the schedule.

The following week we scheduled THREE containers in ONE week. The next, FOUR! We invited PBS back and they didn't disappoint. The group from GMU/US State Department (seen left) finished the first of the last four containers and started another one at the same time for Kenya. Then we did another Kenya and finished up with one heading to El Salvador.

The bottom line is we had an impossible job to complete...and we did it! We moved a ton of bikes in those last two weeks of June. Over 50% of the bikes we've donated so far this year have been shipped from this 1200 S Eads warehouse. 4,637 bikes total. Besides one container for Costa Rica that was loaded in May with 506 bikes, we did it all in the month of June. Over half the bikes we've shipped this year (8,013) happened in the last two weeks of June 2013. Monumental to say the least!

Somebody call Guinness, if it's not a world record it's at least worthy of a toast! My Goodness. Brilliant!

The Hottest Volunteers

George Mason Center for Social Entrepreneurs

We won't admit to having 'favorites' at BfW but there are always All-Stars when it comes to volunteering. In June that stand out group may have been the George Mason Center for Social Entrepreneurs.

Over the past month BfW has been busy out at Lorton every single weekend. Partners in Costa Rica, Kenya, Panama, and Barbados are all receiving containers already this summer via Bikes for the World (and in large part thanks to Dick's Sporting Goods).

BfW stays very busy in the spring and the fall and often uses the summer and winter to take a break, catch up on paperwork, and prepare for the upcoming season. 2012 brought a beneficial twist: 4,000 bikes came in and filled our storage site in Lorton.

Lorton bikes at capacity

After the challenge of receiving, unloading, and storing all these bikes, came the turn around. Every Friday and Saturday in June and July you will find BfW staff and dedicated volunteers unstacking and loading all of these bikes for shipping overseas.

Fortunately we have the help of amazing volunteers from students to corporations who have signed up to participate in these team building loads as groups. This gives BfW the power to load quickly and efficiently.

Tree damage at Lorton storage site.

Little did we know, this would prove to be incredibly important. As many of you probably know, the DC area experienced a Super Storm the weekend of June 30th. After a sweltering Friday, loading in temperatures above 100 degrees, a derecho (I mean this thing is so rare, spellcheck doesn't even know the word!) swept through the area with winds of upwards of 80mph.

Over one million residents found themselves without power, some for over a week. And unlike most storms this one did not bring relief from the heat.

Despite the odds, the All-Star group from George Mason showed up eager to work on Saturday morning. For those of you who have been out to Lorton, you know it's a bit of a drive up to the old gym from Lorton Road. But the derecho knocked down trees and blocked the road up to the old prison, so everyone had to park by the road and hike up to the trailer.

Even though we don't have electricity normally out there, no one in the area had it this weekend. Finding ice, cold drinks, even gas for the car proved to be difficult for these dedicated volunteers out to help BfW finish loading. And after another hot day in an even hotter shipping container, some of these folks had to go home to no AC or electric.

Hats off to everyone who helped with this record setting weekend's load. Tiffany Hsia, Katrina Delany, Ian Burpo, Kaitlyn Hammack, Taylor Scarce, April Emile-Theil, Frank Petricoin, Steve Tomey, and the aptly named Jennifer Storm...you all ROCK! And of course Sarah and Nick who worked through the record breaking 104 degree Friday into the challenging Saturday finish. They say this was the hottest June day in over 140 years and I think Sarah Miller might call this group our hottest volunteers!