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100,000th Bike Donated

Our 100,000th donated bike is helping Gerardo Jesús get to school in Costa rica. Gerardo lives at home with his mother, two brothers and one sister in Tempate, a rural community located in Guanacaste, Costa Rica.

He graduated with excellent grades from the elementary school in Tempate. Because of this, his teacher helped him obtain a scholarship at a private bilingual high school. This high school is called Educarte and is located in another community called Tamarindo.

The scholarship is assisting his family financially to allow Gerardo to attend this private school. This new school is almost 21 miles from his home in Tempate. Every day, to get to school, Gerardo first has to go to Cartagena, which is 7km, or 4.3 miles, from his home. Then in Cartagena he takes a bus to Tamarindo which is 17 miles from Cartagena.

Thanks to Gerardo's bicycle, he can ride the first four miles from home to take the bus and make it safely to his high school. Without a bike, Gerardo would either need to walk to the bus stop or pay someone to drive him there.

This 'special' bike delivered to Guanacaste in December from Bikes for the World is helping Gerardo attend this great school, and saves him valuable time he can now use to study. It is also helping his family avoid the high cost of paying for transportation to deliver Gerardo to catch the bus he needs to arrive to school on time.

This red Specialized was Bikes for the World's 100,000th donated bike and was loaded and shipped on November 15, 2014 as part of America Recycles Day festivities. The 100k bike was donated to Gerardo in Costa Rica because he has proven to be a person who works hard to achieve his goals and has been able to provide for his family and ensure their well being.

The number of lives affected is well over a half million. Here in the United States, in our 10 years of operation, we have donated 100,089 bikes collected in over 1,000 drives. We partner with faith communities, schools, recycling facilities, bikes shops, corporations, and tons of individual volunteers and supporters. We've provided rewarding community service projects for over 13,505 volunteers putting in over 54,990 volunteer hours. Those volunteers have loaded 208 40' shipping containers donated to 22 international partners in 20 countries. Volunteers at our collections and in the warehouse have removed approximately 205,000 pedals!

To everyone who contributed to our 100k event on November 14 & 15, 2014, thank you. Bikes for the World would also like to thank and recognize the following corporate businesses for their efforts:

  • DICK'S Sporting Goods for supplying over 15% of the 100,000 bike donated through Bikes for the World. These bikes were collected nationwide during an annual trade-in trade-up promotion. DICK'S staff partially processes the bikes, loads them onto trucks, and transports them from across the United States to our warehouse in Arlington VA.
  • Vornado/Charles E. Smith for allowing us to use the warehouse space we are currently in as well as previous warehouse space that spans the lifetime of BfW. Our relationship with Vornado goes back to Waterside Mall, our warehouse from January 2005 - October 2006.

    Our current warehouse has allowed us to store more bikes, allowing us to increase the value of our shipments by being more selective regarding the type of bikes and parts we send to one partner and what we are able to store for another. The convenient and Metro accessible location of our warehouse has also facilitated partnerships with more community groups and individuals looking to participate in service loading projects.
  • Special thanks to JetBlue and Microsoft for helping with the container loading for Costa Rica and for helping us bring Luis Jimenez to DC to better explain FINCA Costa Rica.
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