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yvette

Cyclists Ride Around Pandemic Obstacles


When COVID-19 brought a medical crisis to the Philippines, like most countries, they answered with quarantines. Shutting down businesses and public transportation left essential workers literally stranded. Front liners and health professionals were still expected to report to work but many didn't have the means to do so without a lengthy, time...
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yvette

Lockdown has Philippines Shifting Gears


Edward and Lovina work at Philippine General Hospital and while many people were hailing them as heroes labeling them essential, they were struggling just to get to work. Essential workers covers a lot of ground. They are doctors, nurses, security guards, cooks, grocers, food delivery drivers and janitors. Many live miles from w...
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yvette

Providing Essential Transportation


Essential workers in DC got a lift from Bikes for the World last month through a local initiative to bring safe alternative modes of transit to the city amid the coronavirus pandemic. The group BikeMatch DC is pairing up donated bikes with essential workers who are facing limited public transportation options or may not feel comfortable r...
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yvette

Who's Behind the Mask


Today amid health concerns, we are all binding together and finding ourselves in one big sewing circle. Typically a sewing circle includes a group of people working together to create either individual pieces or one big project. Now, many of us are pulling out old sewing machines, dusting off cutting wheels and mats, and trying to remembe...
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Taylor

COVID-19 Response


We hope this note finds you staying safe and healthy during these trying times. As we all deal with the Covid-19 pandemic, we wanted to let you know how Bikes for the World is adapting and responding. To ensure the wellbeing of our staff, volunteers, and members of the public, we suspended collection and shipping operations in mid-March. As ever, w...
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yvette

Providing Support and Protection


These seamstresses in Lawra joined together last month to help slow the spread of coronavirus in their remote village in northwestern Ghana. Mercy and her team are supported by the non profit group Action Through Enterprise (ATE) which helps small business owners thrive in small rural communities hit hardest by poverty and hunger. ATE worked w...
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yvette

Learning to Survive Together


For our newest partner, Rwanda Wildlife Conservation Association (RWCA), educating the community about conservation goes hand in hand with protecting wildlife. Two of their main areas of focus are the endangered grey crowned crane and bat research and conservation. When news of a spreading coronavirus hit Rwanda in late February, RWCA immediat...
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yvette

Closed for Business, Open to Change


Costa Rica is accustomed to weathering many storms, but the coronavirus pandemic may be the toughest. April is a time when beaches would normally be packed with tourists. Markets would be bustling and stocked with fresh fruit picked daily. Coffee houses serving up local brews. Today, the beaches are empty, businesses are closed; the touri...
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yvette

Standing Still But Still Rolling


Taking a look across our partners around the world who are all going through the coronavirus pandemic along with us, we expected to find hardship and heartache. The communities we serve are already at risk. Students struggle to stay in school, farmers rely on subsistence agriculture to feed their families, access to healthcare and hospitals co...
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yvette

Saving Time, Saves Lives


Rabbecca is passionate about sensitizing her community to health issues, and dedicated to saving lives. Behind this commitment is a deep understanding of the pain of losing a child. Years ago, Rabbecca and her husband were forced to walk more than twenty miles over dirt tracks to the nearest health facility, after their own...
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yvette

Repairs. Ingenuity. Commerce. Experience.


Farming is a big part of life in northern Madagascar. There are several 'cash crops' present in the DIANA region. Some of those crops include cocoa and Artemisia which is used in anti-malarial drugs and gaining new interest. But most farmers produce rice, and while yields have been increasing, many of those farmers continue to struggle to feed thei...
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yvette

An Equal World is an Enabled World


In Madagascar women outnumber men in number but not opportunity. And gender equality is essential for economies and communities to thrive. In rural Madagascar, which includes a majority of the population, many families live in poor under-served communities. Too many young girls start out at a disadvantage when they are forced to drop out of school ...
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Taylor

Madagascar Update: Five Years, Going Strong


Bikes for the World's involvement in Madagascar began in 2015 when we first supplied a shipment of bikes to the newly established e-box mandroso in Miandrivazo. Specifically the MAHEFA program, a USAID funded community health program administered locally by a network of Malagasy and international organizations, set out with the objective of providi...
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yvette

Bike Accessories are Instrumental


Daniel Mitra was one of our bike beneficiaries at the Regional Lead School for the Arts in Angono, Philippines. While he was still in high school, he requested a bike with a carrier so he could carry sheet music for his free lessons with kids. Daniel is still in school, he's still playing music, and he's still riding bike! This is him last yea...
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yvette

For the Birds


A fish might not need a bicycle, but this bird sure does! What in the world is a bird going to do with a bike? Thrive to survive. Bikes for the World is excited to announce that we have just partnered with Rwanda Wildlife Conservation Association (RWCA) and already have a container of bikes on the way to them. Just how the bikes will be u...
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yvette

YOU COUNT...We Counted!


Looking Back First and foremost, THANK YOU. 2019 was an incredible year at Bikes for the World and no one knows this more than our tiny staff...we could have never accomplished everything we did without you. If you like numbers and want a visual track of our progress we've created a fun infographic that walks you through our year. If you prefe...
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yvette

Zwel Kids Club


​Welcome to the family! These kids may soon be riding your old bikes. A container of bikes is now on the way to Zwel Kids Club by way of the Rotary Club of Empangeni, our newest partner at Bikes for the World. In fact that shipment should arrive in South Africa before the end of the year. Zwel Kids Club is a community Based Organization (CBO) that ...
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yvette

Rotary Connects the World with Bikes


Getting the most out of Rotary International! Earlier this year our partner Rotary Club of Carroll Creek (RCCC) toppled all records by surpassing the 5,000 bikes donated mark at their annual spring collection. This effort has helped us deliver bikes for over 15 years to 78 recipient partners around the world (38 based in the US). RCC...
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yvette

These Women Mean Business


Empowering women is the name of the game and Village Bicycle Project is winning. Rebecca Conteh is the second of two female mechanics in Sierra Leone to to start her own bike shop. This is truly a major breakthrough in a country that still operates under some significant taboos against women even riding bikes. Rebecca is only 20 years old and she i...
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yvette

The Bike Library


​The Bicycle Library provides bikes to hundreds of girls in Sierra Leone through our partner Village Bicycle Project (VBP). But how does that work exactly? Simply: exactly how you think. Girls who attend a school that has a Bicycle Library can 'check out' a bike much like a library loans out a book. This is just one of the tools of t...
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yvette

Finding Focus- Tracking Adama's Journey


Check out Adama's pink Magna above. This is the bike she rides to and from school every day. Now that she has a bike, Adama is becoming a better student. She absolutely loves school, especially English. Since she started riding to school she has cut her six mile commute time in half. She is now always on time and never misses a day of class. Adama ...
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yvette

Finding Unity in Community


What do you do when World Teacher Day falls on a Saturday? You form a bike ride to visit all your teachers to say thanks! That's what the bike beneficiaries at SPANHS did this past weekend for their monthly community ride in the Philippines. The kids got together on a Saturday and planned a ride to drop in on all their teachers at home to deli...
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yvette

Biking Back To School


School is bike in session. No, that isn't a typo. When these young students from Concepcion Integrated School (CIS) in the Philippines went back to school, the first order of business was getting set up on their bikes. CIS is in their fourth year of  working with Bikes for the Philippines (BfP) and they just introduced thei...
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yvette

Crankin' It Out


Lexlyn is a student at Siocon National High School in Mindanao's Compostela Valley in the Philippines. She is also one of our bike beneficiaries AND an accomplished mechanic. Lexlyn earned the nickname "Girl Power" because of her strength and skill. She is also a great role model and mentor for her fellow bike beneficiaries who just received t...
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Taylor

The Power of Bikes and Women in Batán


Our partner MiBici operates over 200 microfinance credit co-ops in all seven regions of Costa Rica, however, the co-op in Batán is special because it is one of two in the country that is run, staffed and primarily serves women. In the Matina area of the Limón Province, where Batán is situated, the co-op serves an important purpose as a community ce...
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yvette

Education Equality


Girls have come a long way, but they still have miles to go- and hopefully with a bike they will get there faster! This month we are taking a look at education in rural El Salvador. Last time we told you of challenges boys face within their families when it comes to education. But what about girls? First, schools are tackling stereotypes when ...
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yvette

Braking the Cycle


​For these students in rural El Salvador family is everything. Many dream of growing up and finding good jobs to help support their families. And a bicycle could be the difference between a successful engineering career or being stuck in subsistence farming. For families struggling to survive, sending a child to school is often a dif...
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Taylor

Tires and Tilapia in Bambu


 The one constant among the folks we met in Costa Rica was that income diversification was the rule rather than the exception. In the small community of Bambu we met Brauli who primarily supports his family by working as a firefighter in Bri Bri. Beyond that, however, Brauli supplements this work in a number of ways--several of which were pred...
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Taylor

Closing the Circle on Kobrita


Back in 2011 the Washington Post followed a shipment of donated bikes from Bikes for the World to their destination in Costa Rica. Specifically those bikes ended up in Sepecue and were transported there via small boats on the Rio Telire. While this was not a community that was visited on this trip, there was a more direct connection to the bikes an...
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Taylor

Bananas and Bikes in Shiroles


One of the constants in rural Talamanca is the importance of bananas or plantains to nearly every family and individual that we met. Unlike the bananas that you find in your local supermarkets which are generally grown on large plantations owned by multinationals like Dole or Del Monte, the majority of the bananas in Talamanca are grown on small 1-...
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yvette

Mr. Everything


Granjero, vendedor, mecánico de bicicletas, esposo, padre, bombero: Brauli. This is Brauli, his wife Stephanie, and their son Matteo. They live in a small community known as Bambu which is tucked in a corner of the Telire River in Southeast Costa Rica. While their home is surrounded by the Telire on three sides (they can see Panama from t...
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Taylor

Making an impact in rural Talamanca


When a donated bike ends up in Costa Rica with our partner MiBici it will almost always end up in a relatively rural area where getting around by bike is the most logical and cost-effective transportation option. During my time in Costa Rica I visited several small communities in Talamanca, close to the Panamanian border and well beyond the end of ...
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Taylor

Banana Bike!??


 Everyone knows about bananas and how commonplace they are all over Costa Rica, but what about banana bikes? What is known as a beach cruiser to most of us has simply been dubbed the banana bike in Costa Rica and is the most sought after type of bike in many parts of the country. These bikes are known as bananas because the frames often look l...
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yvette

First Place in the 5k Race: Rotary Club of Carroll Creek


Participating in a 5k, whether you walk or run, is how many people support charities and causes all over the world.  On average, it takes about 35 minutes or an hour to complete. Imagine if it took 14 years!  That's exactly how long it took the Rotary Club of Carroll Creek to win the race to 5,000 bikes. See when we say 5k, you think feet...
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yvette

Fast Track to Success


Isata is going places. Fast. And the bike is taking her there. Isata is one of only a few female bike mechanics in all of Sierra Leone. Isata was introduced to bikes in school when she first started riding as a student, and she never stopped. Back then she was racing the boys just trying to keep up, but now they are chasing...
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yvette

Bikes for Education: It Adds Up


​In Sierra Leone, especially in rural areas, schools are spread out making the commute for students long and tiresome. For some families this hardship can put graduation out of reach. It is not usual to find a student who walks as much as eight miles one way just to get to school. Most walk at least four. The time needed to walk those mil...
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yvette

Access to Vital Healthcare

Photo credit: Toby Madden/Transaid

 Josephine Mupeta is a farmer and Community Health Volunteer (CHV) in the Serenje District in Zambia. She was trained through a Transaid health program to specifically recognize when someone is suffering from malaria. Her motivation is to help save lives in her community. One of the ways Josephine educates her neighbors about the danger signs ...
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yvette

What is eBox and ETS?


Health care in rural Africa is compromised by distance and accessibility. Communicating information and delivering basic health related supplies, some as simple as soap, are huge first steps in battling disease and even death in small rural communities.Our partner in Madagascar, Transaid is an international development organization that transforms ...
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yvette

Saving Baby Mahazomaro


Robin Erinesy is helping to save lives in his community as part of the Emergency Transport Scheme (ETS) in Madagascar. He operates this bicycle ambulance to help deliver patients to medical professionals.Because the roads are poorly maintained and the terrain is difficult to navigate by motor vehicle, transportation is often expensive if accessible...
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yvette

UPDATE: Janet's Story


​Some day Janet will have a business of her own. It is a dream she never imagined could come true. Janet lives in a small community in Ghana with limited employment opportunities. Her family was struggling and while she helped out on the family farm, she wasn't earning any money of her own. Then, she met an organization called Action Through Enterp...
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yvette

Tires, Tykes, and Bikes


It's never too early to learn how to ride a bike...or the importance of donating one. The kids above may not be riding on two wheels yet, but once they do, they will outgrow their bikes before you can spell Motobecane. We think now is the perfect time to tell them about Bikes for the World. And their school agreed. They are the Junior Kinderga...
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yvette

Chasing the Wind: Nirfe's Story


Nirfe Masudo uses her bike to help earn money to feed her family. She was chosen to receive a bike through the Bikes for Education program offered through Bikes for the Philippines. Nirfe's school, Dr. Beato C. Macayra National High School was selected as a beneficiary school after waiting nearly five years for bikes. The bikes were meant...
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Reynaldo's Story: Bike-Ability


Reynaldo Naque is another student beneficiary from Dr. Beato Macayra National High School in Davao Oriental, Philippines. He was selected by his teacher Mam Ritchie Adanza to receive a bike from the first batch released in June 2018. ​For Reynaldo a bike meant more than a ride to school, it completely transformed how his classmates saw and tre...
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Jeric's Story


Jeric Margate is a student, bike rider, mechanic, mentor, and leader. And all were made possible through Bikes for the Philippines (BfP) and Jeric's teacher, Ritchie Adanza who named Jeric a bike beneficiary at Dr. Beato Macayra National High School in Baganga, Davao Oriental.  When Mam Ritchie heard about the Pedals and Paddles program sponso...
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yvette

Taking Notes


​As it turns out, learning music is a lot like riding a bicycle. It takes concentration, control, patience, and attention to cadence to create that balance or flow. For these young musicians in Barbados the connection to bicycles goes even deeper.  Pinelands Creative Workshop (PCW) is a Bajan community center located in an historically under-s...
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yvette

2018 Snapshot: our year in review


Thank you for your support of Bikes for the World in 2018. This past year we were able to accomplish so much through your support. In a year filled with change and transition we were able to hit some big landmarks and accomplish important goals. These included seeing a big uptick in volunteers at our Rockville site, the continued growth and strengt...
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yvette

Preserving Culture Through Pedals


Jesus Mena Martinez is a cattle farmer from Isla Chira. He watched many neighbors and even members of his own family move away in search of a better life filled with unlimited opportunities. While resources may be scarce, life on Chira Island is rich in culture and the landscape breathtaking. It is a hard life to leave behind, but many feel fo...
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yvette

Harvest of Hope


Feeding programs, similar to this one in Sierra Leone, are provided through schools to ensure that students receive at least one meal a day especially in the hardest hit months of July and August. Food insecurity affects much of the country, but is felt deepest among the most vulnerable, Sierra Leone's youth. While Sierra Leone is home to some of t...
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Planting Hope


​Food security continues to cripple rural areas of Sierra Leone, often for months at a time. Nearly 3/4 of the land is suitable for agriculture, however, the country still fails to provide enough food for its population. During the rainy season in August many children go to school hungry as their parents struggle to feed their large families. ...
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yvette

Burkina Faso Moving Forward


​For many young girls in Burkina Faso becoming a woman comes far too early. Change is coming but for many girls it hasn't been soon enough. Several years ago, laws were enacted to make it illegal to force girls to marry before the age of 18. Before then, girls had little say over their futures. Girls younger than 16 were sometimes taken from their ...
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Sew Empowering


Trinidad Montoya took a job of necessity and turned it into a successful, thriving business. Several years ago, Trinidad was faced with high medical bills when her young daughter needed special treatments in the city. In order to pay for the care her disabled daughter needed, Trinidad started sewing clothing and making small repairs for friends in ...
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yvette

The Women of Cycloville


We are Cycloville. These three women were in the first round of training when the organization formed in 2015. Sharon, Elma, and Jackie (seen here with Julius and Winstone) trained under Julius to learn the ins and outs of bicycle mechanics. They are now fully trained bike mechanics who can not only do their own repairs, but train others to do the ...
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yvette

Cycloville: New Kenyan Partner


​New in 2018! Bikes for the World added a new partner in August when we shipped our first container to Cycloville in Kenya. Cycloville is not a new organization; in fact it's not even new to us. Cycloville is a network of cyclists and bike shops around Nairobi who came together back in 2015 to form a 'cycling village' : Cycloville. Since that time,...
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yvette

Gerardo is Graduating


Gerardo lives in the Guanacaste region of Costa Rico with his family. He is the oldest of four and strives to set a positive example for his sister and two younger brothers. When we first met Gerardo in 2014, he was 12 years old and had dreams of becoming an architect. In Guanacaste most families make their money through farming or working in the t...
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MiBici Guanacaste Educarte Tempate Tamarindo
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Measuring Success


You may have heard us claim that each of our bikes donated represents up to four lives improved. In fact sometimes it's even more than that. We took the red Trek seen above and tracked how it may have started its journey in Martinsburg, WV and ended up with Janet in Lawra, Ghana. Janet participates in a vocational program run through an organizatio...
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MotivATEd to Learn


Jessica. Mercy. Juliana. Just a few of the students above who received bikes through Village Bicycle Project (VBP) last week. One of these bikes (or more!) may have come from a spring shipment delivered from Bikes for the World to Ghana, which arrived early in July. Many of the student testimonials share a similar story line. Take Jennifer, a stude...
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yvette

Peace through Grease


This month Bikes for the World welcomed a group of students visiting the United States on a mission to build peace. The selected participants came from Israel and Palestine and were brought together through Jerusalem Peacebuilders based out of Houston, Texas. This year Jerusalem Peacebuilders partnered up with Cyprus Friendship Program, who we have...
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yvette

Leveraging Impact


​The impact of Bikes for the World goes well beyond giving someone a bike. In fact our mission states that Bikes for the World uses the bike as a vehicle to provide opportunities to empower individuals to better their families, communities, and the environment. It's really more about building self-empowerment, which happens all along the path our b...
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Milkman Delivers By Bike


Fred Musunda has never visited our nation's capital, he's not holding a ticket to see Hamilton, nor has he ever heard of the Kennedy Center. But Fred owes his livelihood to the living memorial perched on the banks of the Potomac River.  How's that you ask? Yes, it seems like an odd connection, but it's a small world, after all. Fred lives near...
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yvette

Tu bicicleta


This is Yirlania, Adrian and her daughter. They signed up to receive 83 bikes from our latest shipment to MiBici. They live in the City of Cortes in the Brunca region of Costa Rica. Yirlania owns a small shop where she also sells meals on request. Adrian is a music teacher and also helps out in his wife's shop. Together they will manage the small b...
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A Trek Across the Telire


The Telire River divides the lush, beautiful jungles of Talamanca from the rest of Costa Rica. There is no McDonalds or 7-11. No fire department, library, or hospital. They just recently built a formal high school. There's not much in the way of jobs there either. While the area is a prime farming spot, selling the crops can be a time consumin...
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Rock Hopper Takes on a New Meaning


For Guisel Sanchez the dream of owning a bicycle seemed as remote as her small farming community in Coroma Costa Rica. When Guisel was born the community didn't even have a formal high school. The residents are from a native tribe known as the Bribri and many do not have water or electricity. Coroma lies on the eastern border of Costa Rica near Pan...
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Because a Bike is More than JUST a Bike


For Karim Kamara, Village Bicycle Project (VBP) provided much more than just a bike to get to work; for Karim, they provided work to get to bikes! Karim is a member of the Village Bicycle Project Sierra Leone team who brings in and manages the distribution of bikes coming from organizations like Bikes for the World. He also travels around the count...
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Grease Corps

From Hagerstown, Md to Accra, Ghana

May is the beginning of Bike Month, but at Bikes for the World we typically celebrate a month early, during Earth Month. This year was no exception. It was a record breaking month in April several times over. We hosted a dozen community led collections that netted over 2,000 bicycles and a record 54 sewing machines. In. One. Month. There were almos...
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Bike + Mechanic = Prosperous


For Village Bicycle Project (VBP) delivering bicycles in Ghana and Sierra Leone is only a job half done. The critical component to the sustainability of this program is extending the life of the bicycles through highly trained mechanics accessible to the new bike owners. When VBP considers a new village to add to their growing list of beneficiaries...
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Update on Jake

Jake Palijado (Cebu shirt and hat)

Jake Palijado was one of Bikes for the Philippines' (BfP) first bike beneficiaries when the program started in 2011.  When BfP was hand selecting the first students to receive bikes through the program, however, Jake wasn't even in the mix. He lived more than three miles from school and his family's monthly income was just over $50. He mo...
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Rebuilding a Country with Bicycles


The Village Bicycle Project (VBP) is not only one of Bikes for the World's (BfW) longest standing partners, but also the second leading partner receiving bikes from our program. BfW started shipping bikes to this group in 2005 to their Ghanaian operation and added Sierra Leone in 2012. In the last two years BfW has more than doubled the number of b...
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Community Service Leaders


April is a busy time for Bikes for the World as the temperatures start to warm (we hope) and service projects start to lean toward recycling and environmental issues in celebration of Earth Month. Bike donations spike starting now and lasting through summer. This means we get very busy in our warehouse loading containers and prepping bikes for our ...
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More Beneficiaries Graduate


This week Bikes for the Philippines celebrated the first bike beneficiaries to graduate from partnering school, Concepcion Integrated School. This was the first school adopted into the bike program that spanned grades K-12. The Regional School for the Arts also graduated eight bike beneficiaries this year. Congratulations to all the graduating seni...
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Spotlight on Alajuela Costa Rica


Continuing with our series on Costa Rica, we visit the province of Alajuela. Alajuela is situated in the north central portion of Costa Rica. Although this province lacks the beautiful coastline that typically draws tourists to the country, it still boasts a visually stunning landscape Within the boundaries of Alajuela one can find stunning waterfa...
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Spotlight on Guanacaste Costa Rica


Guanacaste is a well known and loved area of Costa Rica along the northwest coast of the country. Tourists flock to the beaches along the Pacific coastline to enjoy activities such as surfing, scuba diving, fishing, or just relaxing in the sand. Guanacaste is one of seven provinces in Costa Rica. It is the province that produces most of food in Cos...
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Spotlight on Talamanca Costa Rica


This is Talamanca, an Indian reservation located in the South Caribbean of Costa Rica. During the last few years, Bikes for the World and FINCA Costa Rica have sent four containers of bikes to Talamanca through MiBici. Some communities in this remote area can only be accessed by the Telire River. Bikes must be offloaded and reloaded onto small 'pan...
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Building Community and Service


This all started back in 2011 with two girls from Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart. Those two girls, along with teacher Ken Woodward, would come out to King Farm a couple times a week to help us load containers to be shipped overseas. This was part of their school wide Social Action program and over the years the popularity of working with Bi...
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Kadiatu: Local Trailblazer


Kadiatu is a teacher at the Maria Inez Vocational School in Lunsar, Sierra Leone. She started working with Village Bicycle Project (VBP) several years ago and is one of the few female mechanics in the country. Kadiatu is part of VBP's Learn to Ride program that started in Sierra Leone in 2009. Kadiatu trained to be a mechanic and she now keeps the ...
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Update from the Philippines: Eunice and Cristy Graduate!

Eunice and Cristy graduate

Eunice (left) and Cristy (right) were some of our first beneficiaries in the Bikes for Philippines program started in 2011. Both girls received bikes in their junior year of high school to help them stay in school and graduate. Both Cristy and Eunice graduated high school in 2013 and both received a free scholarship to continue their education at t...
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Update from the Philippines: Crea

Crea Ocdenaria with bike

Back in 2014 we introduced you to Crea, who received a bike in the Philippines to help her complete school. This bike was donated through a Rockville youth who earned the bike through the city's Earn-A-Bike project known as TERRIFIC. At the time Crea was a junior in school and walking nearly four miles to get to school. Her father was a laborer ear...
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What a Trek!


This blue Trek has had a long and happy life. This bike belonged to Wendy and she learned how to jump logs, scream through streams, and even how to fall not-so-gracefully on many a mountain trail. It's been to the hills of West Virginia, the beaches of Cape Cod, even across the ferry and into the city streets of Boston. After upgrading her ride wit...
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