Featured Volunteer: Carol Goodloe

As Bikes for the World gears up to celebrate our big 100k event, we've been looking back over the 100,000 bikes donated since 2005. Some of the same faces can be found on the other side of a pedal wrench whether it was eight years ago at Tysons or yesterday in Pentagon City.

Carol Goodloe is one of those volunteers who has been with Keith since before we've been Bikes for the World. She has assisted at collections, been a regular in almost ALL our warehouses, and has probably loaded containers for all our overseas partners over the years. This recognition is, as they say, long over due.

BfW Director Keith Oberg and Carol remember the story the same. I guess you could say it was a while back....they met in middle school. No, THEY weren't in middle school, but their sons were. And you may or may not know Keith's son just got married. Congratulations Alex Oberg and Carla Cevasco.

So, Keith went into Alex's middle school for a green/environmental fair and gave a talk on recycling bikes for donations overseas. He introduced this bike recycling program and Carol, whose son Hank attended the same school, was intrigued with the idea. Carol is an avid cyclist and thought it sounded like a great idea.

Over the years, Carol has helped load containers at Tysons, Springfield, Lorton, even Waterside Mall. She is now a regular at Pentagon City, sometimes popping in on volunteer night after a round of tennis. And during the grueling days of unloading DICK'S trucks, sometimes three in one day, Carol was there, wrench in hand. In fact, she processed so many handlebars those weeks, you probably had to pry it out of her hand.

Carol has the same smile, the same determination, same hard working spirit...perhaps a new headband...as she had when she started with us over a decade ago.

Since her retirement from the US Department of Agriculture, Carol has become more active with BfW.  Keith recognized from the beginning, "Carol intuitively understood the role that bicycles could play in transforming lives and communities overseas."

Carol spent a lot of time working with rural communities around the world and even living overseas. "She knows how valuable a commodity a bicycle is in our receiving countries, where labor to service the bikes is available and transportation is expensive."

"As a long-time biker, I loved the idea (of BfW) and helped out. I figured it was a great way to improve my upper body strength. Still working on that, though," jokes Carol.

Don't let her fool you. Carol will outlast any of our younger volunteers, hoisting the final bikes into a hot container any day of the week. She is afraid of no bike. Will not walk away from a challenge... okay maybe one or two, but she gives it all she has AND a dab of WD40!

She may leave volunteer night with a bunch of bikes corralled in a corner for Yvette to work on, upside down, one pedal off, handlebars half turned....but they are usually the 'super stuck' bikes; a loosely technical term fitting of 'Carol's Clunkers'. And often Yvette leaves defeated as well, pushing them over to Phil's corner for that bit of finesse that tames even the snarkiest bikes. A small trade secret, not even Carol knew about...until now.

We Say Goodbye to King Farm

Bikes for the World is losing a part of the family. It is with great sadness that we announce the closing of the Bikes for the World facility at King Farm in Rockville.

This ends a seven-year tenure during which Bikes for the World operated the Rockville Youth Bike Project out of two of the farm buildings- the hay barn and a tenant cottage. BfW stored and dispatched more than 25,000 bicycles around the world from this location, to local recipients such as the nearby Montgomery County temporary workers' center, to institutions and individuals in places like Ghana, Mozambique, and Uganda.

Among the activities at "the Farm" were the gifting each May of reconditioned bikes to Rockville elementary school children who earned them through participation in a Department of Recreation & Parks values-promotion program. More than 250 reconditioned bikes were presented to local students over the life of the project.

In support of Bikes for the World's international activities, which saw the aforementioned 25,000+ bicycles collected, prepped, and stored locally, and shipped from the site, the RYBP provided local middle and high school students with opportunities to earn thousands of "student service learning" hours required for graduation from Maryland public schools, and reflect on issues of recycling and reuse, the environment, transportation, and humanitarian assistance.

Other activities included hosting Boy Scout service projects, including two young men who built storage racks and painted the barn fulfilling their independent community service project requirement for the Eagle rank, and a social action partnership, now about to enter its fourth year, bringing Stone Ridge School juniors and seniors to the Farm every other week during the school year to immerse the students in Bikes for the World's work, learning about bikes and their contribution to the environment and to human development.

During the first three years of the RYBP, under contract to the City of Rockville, Bikes for the World annually taught pedestrian and bike safety at public and private elementary schools around the city, reaching several thousand children overall and contributing to the City's outstanding pedestrian and cycling safety record.

A recent engineering study contracted by our landlord, the City of Rockville, determined that the roof and supporting walls of the barn, our principal locus of activity, were at risk of collapse. The study identified structural issues with the other buildings, resulting in the City's decision to suspend all activities at the farmstead pending a decision on the future of the site.

Bikes for the World is currently looking for a replacement space in Montgomery County to continue to operate the program and store bicycles. If you know of any potentially available space, whether short or long term, free or for commercial lease, please contact Bikes for the World executive director Keith Oberg at 571.212.4139 or keith@bikesfortheworld.org.

Featured Volunteer: Keith Whitaker

Collecting bikes in South Carolina

Summer 2012. "I live in Charleston, SC and am interested in helping out." It was a simply stated, common email that came into Bikes for the World about two years ago. We had no idea then, how serious Keith Whitaker was.

Keith is the marketing director at Gildan's Branded Apparel Division headquarters in Charleston, South Carolina. He heard about Bikes for the World and he wanted to get involved. But he also had a vision: he wanted to take advantage of the containers his company was sending back to their operation in Honduras. Let's fill them with bikes!

This was no ordinary volunteer fulfilling community service hours. Keith was in a position to expand our vision to create Bikes for the World 'chapters' outside the DC area. Bikes for the World was about to pop up in South Carolina. We were stoked!

Fast forward a year. Summer 2013. Coordinating an effort at a distance between a corporation and a new non-profit partner overseas doesn't happen overnight. While BfW Director Keith Oberg was working out the details with the potential partner, Fundacion Adelante, Gildan's Director of Marketing Keith Whitaker was speaking with the company's CEO.

Finally, everyone came to an agreement. Keith Whitaker would host several bike collections in the community, collect bikes and store them at Gildan. Adelante agreed to take an initial shipment of 100 bikes to get a feel for how the program would work.

First BfW container loading in SC

So Whitaker recruited the help from fellow co-workers Sarah Stafford and Chuck Jones to help advertise the collections, prep the bikes, and ultimately load the container themselves, right there in South Carolina. To supplement the shipment Keith Oberg arranged to have bikes collected earlier in 2013 at Reagan High School in NC transported to Gildan in SC. In fact, Whitaker also coordinated the effort to pick up and deliver these bikes to Gildan's warehouse in SC.

Fast forward one more year. Summer 2014. Adelante recently reported back to Bikes for the World on the how the program was going. Our donated bikes were received in February 2014. They were then refurbished so that they could be sold at a low cost to rural Hondurans in need of affordable transportation to get to work and school.

Jose Matute, bike mechanic and shop owner

Jose Matute, a local bicycle shop owner, was responsible for getting the donated bikes back in working order. His bike business is booming by supplying parts to the new bike owners as well as continuing further maintenance on the bikes.

Profits from the bike program are helping to fund a new initiative Adelante is currently establishing, the Secondary Education Loan. This loan will help clients with the high cost of sending a child to school, to help pay for things such as textbooks and school uniforms.

Interested in helping out. A powerful and understated phrase that led to one man flanked by two dedicated friends joining forces with the nation's leading bicycle re-use program to deliver hope to rural Honduras. Featured Volunteer? Yeah, that's an understatement.

Getting Back To School

The desire to stay in school is often challenged by the need to drop out for many poorer children in remote areas of the world. In villages around the globe, where students often live several miles from school without affordable transportation, drop-out rates in high schools and even middle schools are soaring.

Yellow Boat of HOPE provides boats for Filipino students

Many rural communities often have rocky, narrow paths leading from students' homes to their far off schools. In the Philippines, which is a country of small islands, some students even have to cross water in order to attend school.

Adding to the challenge of simply getting to school, many families cannot afford to have their children away from home for long periods of time. Many are responsible for household chores, caring for siblings, and even working in the community to help their families.

As students become older and enter high school, their commutes often become longer, sometimes 2-3 hours of their days. They have less time for homework and find themselves tired in the classroom. For a family that may earn only $25 US a week, having that child drop out to help around the house is often better for the family.

But ultimately not better for the child. Or the community. Education is the key to making their communities better and their governments stronger. Shortening commutes and giving back the to the families the precious resource of time is a good place to start. And a bicycle is a great way to accomplish that.

In Honduras, one family is struggling with more than just how to get to school; Norma, the mother of three sons, cannot afford to send her oldest son back to school. When Ronaldo entered seventh grade, he was walking two hours every day in extreme heat, just to get to and from school. He ended up dropping out.

Now Ronaldo is 15 and wants to go back to school. He is the oldest of three boys and wants to set a good example for his brothers. He also realized he couldn't reach his potential without a degree. Unfortunately, his family did not have the economic resources to help him re-enroll.

But just this month, thanks to the partnership with Bikes for the World, Adelante, a micro-finance program in Honduras, is addressing this problem. They are not only assisting by getting bikes to rural areas to help kids with transportation to school, but they are also helping provide loans for school associated costs.

Profits from the bike project will help fund a Secondary Education Loan initiative created to support family's like Ronaldo's. This will help with the high cost of uniforms, textbooks, and administration fees required at the beginning of a school year allowing Ronaldo to fulfill his dream of continuing his education.

From Students in NC to Students in Honduras

In 2013 Bikes for the World teamed up with Gildan Activewear to deliver a trial shipment of about 100 bikes to a potential new partner in Honduras. Bikes for the World already works with Art for Humanity, a local non-profit, to occasionally donate a few bikes in containers they pack full of a variety of donated items.

This pilot effort by Bikes for the World and Gildan Activewear delivered a container of bikes to a micro-finance group called  Fundacion Adelante. Adelante was founded in 1999 in response to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Mitch, which left $3.8 billion in damages and over three million citizens homeless.

Adelante provides short-term small business loans to the poorest of the poor rural Honduran women, so they can invest in small businesses to earn income to support themselves and their families. Over time, the women use their business profits to buy better food for their families, improve their homes, buy medicine when necessary, send their children to school, and save for the future.

Reagan High School students

Bikes collected at Gildan's Branded Apparel division headquarters in South Carolina were loaded into an empty container heading back to Honduras where Gildan also operates.

In addition to the bikes collected at Gildan, Bikes for the World arranged to have bikes collected on our behalf at Reagan High School in North Carolina transported to Gildan. The bikes collected by these students were also loaded onto this container donated to Adelante in Honduras.

Reagan High's Key Club has partnered with Bikes for the World the last three years. We can't always track where an individual bike may end up, but in this case, bikes collected at Reagan High during the 2013 collection were all shipped to Honduras. Knowing how those bikes are helping a community reinforces the impact those students are making not only in their home town of Pfafftown, NC, but also in five separate regions in Honduras.

Adelante received this donation of bicycles, delivered by Gildan, at the beginning of 2014. The profits from bike sales are funding a new Educational Loan project established just this month that will begin in 2015.

Adelante is distributing our donated bicycles at a low cost in rural areas that have little access to resources and reliable transportation. Bikes will help keep students enrolled in school and also help Adelante clients transport goods with greater ease.

Clients are eligible for an Educational Loan to help finance sending their kids to school. Adelante learned that 35% of their clients have children between the ages of 12-20 that have dropped out of school. Another 37% of clients have children at risk of dropping out before graduation.

Local Bike Donations

Courtesy St. Louis Bicycle Works

Yesterday we told you about how bikes donated by Bikes for the World are helping youth programs across the United States. We also explained why it's challenging to find new partners, something we are committed to working on continually.

Because BfW is the nation's largest bicycle reuse organization and we are handling over 15,000 bikes annually, we typically donate bikes in full containers (500 at a time). Locally, we sometimes donate as little as 30-100, but only when we know the bikes can be repaired with the recipient. This is why many of our domestic projects are earn-a-bike programs.

Family, originally from Ghana, earns bikes through Rockville

Five weeks ago Bikes for the World had shipped around 5,000 bikes for the year. That number is now close to 10,000. In the past two months, we have seen around 6,000 bikes come into our Arlington warehouse and we loaded containers every week. Needless to say, we don't have time to repair bikes coming through our warehouse; most of that is done through the partners we hand select.

But there are always exceptions to the rule. For example, in exchange for our use of the King Farm barn in Rockville we partner with the Parks and Rec department to pair Rockville youth with refurbished bikes through their TERRIFIC bike program. Our Operations Manager repairs about 50 bikes a year from our donated bikes to supply this program.

Takoma Park Middle School student

Right around the time we were working on the TERRIFIC bikes, we got word that a homeless student from Hyattsville needed a bike. We were able to find one in our Rockville supply that would work and delivered it to him last month.

The student was introduced to us through a teacher at Takoma Park Middle School and the Safe Routes to School program. His family is originally from The Gambia and relocated here from New York in hopes of better working prospects.

The family is currently homeless and staying in Hyattsville Maryland. During the school year, MCPS provides bus service to get kids to and from school, but the arrangement is difficult and makes his commute time consuming. The bike donated by Bikes for the World helped him finish out his school year and saved a ton of time.

St Augustine's Episcopal Church DC

 A few other donations materialized this spring through the hard work of some long time BfW collection partners. Finding a mechanic to get our donations in good working order is often the hardest part.

The West Springfield Rotary worked with The Bike Lane in Springfield to ready bikes for Kristi's Christmas, which donates bikes in June to Fairfax students in need.

The Waldorf Kiwanis has been doing an annual collection with Bikes for the World at Calvary Gospel in Waldorf for years. They approached us this spring and brought to our attention another church in Pikesville Kentucky who had a large number of poorer families who wanted bikes for their children.

During a recent loading in Arlington, the Kiwanis Club sent a truck and trailer to pick up 100 18 inch bikes that were donated by Bikes for the World. These kids bikes were taken to Kentucky where they will be refurbished and donated to the kids in the community.

St Augustine's Episcopal Church in DC (photo above), received a donation of seven bikes through our first Board Chairman Nick Griffin.

Every fall we also donate bikes to the Baltimore Christmas Bike Project.

 

Youth Programs, Learning and Earning

Courtesy Phoenix Bikes

So far this year Bikes for the World has donated over 9,500 bikes to other organizations worldwide.  While a majority of our bikes are donated overseas, many also stay right here in America. In 2014, BfW has donated bikes to eight organizations overseas. We have also donated just under 1,000 bikes to eight domestic projects
as well.

It is often more difficult to find local groups who support our mission, can accept bike donations in the larger quantities that we typically donate, AND have the workforce to fix up the bikes that are often in need of major repairs.  Nearly 100% of our donations locally are working to benefit young people, either by getting them a bike or teaching them a valuable skill.

Bikes donated to BfW FROM Phoenix Bikes

One of our favorite groups we work with is right here in Arlington, Phoenix Bikes. Phoenix Bikes is a youth program that teaches kids how to fix up bikes, but it doesn't stop there. Check out this recent article from the Washington Post to see how great this program is for yourself.

What you may not know about Phoenix Bikes, and many other groups like them, is that they also turn around and donate right back to groups like Bikes for the World. Just last month Phoenix delivered a couple truckloads of bikes to BfW that have already been shipped overseas. In turn, we donated some road bikes back to them to help support the youth program.

Courtesy BWorks: More DICK'S bikes

Back in May, BfW partnered for a third year with DICK'S Sporting Goods to offer a trade-in trade-up promotion to their customers. During this one week event, customers brought in an old bike to receive money off a new bike. DICK'S then donated all of those bikes, over 5,500!, to BfW.

Two trailers of bikes coming from DICK'S warehouses were diverted to another non-profit in St. Louis, St. Louis Bicycle Works (BWorks). This is another local youth program which can benefit from some of our donated bikes that are less suitable for use on rural village roads overseas.

Courtesy St. Louis Bicycle Works

St. Louis works with Bikes for the World to help ship bikes overseas to our same partners. Many of these youth programs, like BWorks, are based in the city and make use of more road bikes than mountain frames for their programs. They either donate the unwanted bikes to us, or ship them directly from their warehouses.

This shipment (seen left) was loaded in June and is on its way to BfW partner CESTA in El Salvador. Back in Arlington, we just finished loading a container this past weekend, that will also soon be on its way to CESTA, to support their youth program in El Salvador.