Last spring we followed the path of one bicycle from a collection point in DC to its new home in Costa Rica. This is the story of how that black Cannondale made an impact from H Street NW to El Roble de Alajuela. Its journey begins with its World Bank family who used the bike for recreation before donating it at a collection held last June. We can'...
Last year Bikes for the World welcomed back many of our veteran collection sites which are all led and staffed by volunteers. Many of these events were put on hold during the pandemic in an effort to keep volunteers and the public safe. The two year hiatus impacted the quality of bikes we collected more than the number since we continued to find ab...
Strong women get things done. This is something we know well around Bikes for the World, but if there was any question, just take a look at our most recent shipment currently on its way to Madagascar. From the time the container was dropped off (by a woman!) to the time it is unloaded, sorted, inventoried, and its contents redistributed, the bikes ...
Donating bikes locally is not something that comes easy for Bikes for the World, at least not in bulk. If you consider the number of bikes we collect and donate a year (12,000) versus the number of full time trained mechanics we have in the warehouse (2) you might get a better idea of why. Also consider how/why bikes are donated to us in the first ...
Jackie got her start as a bike mechanic through a workshop offered at Cycloville. She originally saw the opportunity as a way to improve her family. She quickly saw the impact she could have on her community. Jackie took part in one of the first training sessions offered by Cycloville seven years ago. It was a small class of three women and on...
So much has changed since we introduced you to Richard Dayamba (seen above in red) back in 2018. He was helping unload bikes we had donated to Lumière des Enfants, also known as ALE. It was our second container we had shipped to this project in Burkina Faso. Richard was one of the first volunteers to help work on the new bike project. Then, R...
Many of you who have come to the warehouse to volunteer or donate bikes were curious how we navigated the changing landscape over the past few years. While it's been challenging we've realized a lot of good came out of the process. The team sat down recently and explored some of your questions and we realized the pandemic helped us reorganize our e...
Women and children continue to suffer the most as the earth becomes more harsh and unforgiving. Chronic drought, windstorms, and flash floods are changing the landscape of humanity. Each devastating storm is driving Burkinabe further into poverty and will eventually force them to flee not just looking for a better life, but in an effort to survive....
The cycle of violence in Sahel is only one of the intense challenges the people in Burkina Faso face on a daily basis. For one of the poorest nations in the world resources are scarce and systems are overwhelmed. The conflict in Burkina Faso goes back decades but has intensified over the last seven years. The Sahel is the region in Northern Africa ...
Meet Dionne, Marilyn, and Nakeisha, just a few of the small business owners making big waves in Barbados. These three entrepreneurs recently graduated from the Personal and Economic Empowerment for Women (PEEW) program offered through our partner Pinelands Creative Workshop (PCW). Building on its overall mission, Pinelands created this intensi...
Riding bikes is a right of passage that one PE teacher wanted to make sure his students had the opportunity to experience. Dwayne Phillips (in hat above) is a physical education teacher at West Terrace Primary School in Barbados. The students he teaches range in age from 5-9 years old. Because of the pandemic, many of them had a challenging start t...
Building a wheel is a skill that requires a lot of knowledge and patience. It's not for everyone, but if you can master it you could be left with more than just a functioning wheel. Building and truing a wheel can build character, confidence, respect, and trust. Remarkable qualities to build a strong foundation for a business or a reputation. ...
Stefani de Paz takes great pride in her bike repair business. Stefani grew up watching her dad fix bicycles. She loved watching him work in their shop and had dreams of one day working along side him in the family business. In El Salvador it's unusual for a woman to do this work but it's something she was always interested in doing. When her ...
It's known as "the richest event in one of the world's poorest countries." The Tour de Lunsar is now one of the best-known bicycle races in West Africa, but it had an uphill climb to the podium. The Tour de Lunsar is the creation of Abdul Karim Kamara, who started as a bike shop owner supported by Village Bicycle Project. He then became the in-coun...
Every kid deserves the opportunity to ride a bike. It's this simple statement that drives Smiles 4 Miles. But for kids in marginalized communities the statement, 'as easy as riding a bike' might as well be 'as hard as scaling K2'. BIPOC kids don't always have access to trails, safety equipment, or even bikes. That's where the Smiles 4 Miles Tour co...
In Rwanda an old bike transforms the lives of newborns and their moms. Bikes for the World's newest partner, Learn Work and Develop (LWD) uses donated bicycles to support the young people in Rwanda by providing economic, medical and psychosocial support to teens at risk of getting pregnant, are currently pregnant, or recently became ...
In 2021 we said goodbye to an old trustworthy friend who has been with through so many fairs, events, and training sessions we completely lost count.This blue MTX Giant mountain bike was donated to us when the previous owner outgrew the frame. He went on to college and graduated and we still had the bike in our warehouse! This 'display' bike travel...
Honey Jane came to Manila to find a better life, but no one envisioned the path that would ultimately take her back to exactly where she started. We introduced you to Honey Jane back in 2017 when she entered our Bikes for Education program in the Philippines. Then, she was a student at Regional School for the Arts Angono (RLSAA) in M...
Aruna is a Community Health Nurse who uses his bike to deliver covid vaccines to communities surrounding the hospital where he works. He recently received his bike through our partner Village Bicycle Project, but he realized the power of a bicycle when he became a nurse seven years ago. Aruna graduated from nursing school in 2014 and star...
Early last year, Mary graduated from nursing school, transferred to Lunsar, and immediately got a job at the hospital. Then the pandemic hit. She found herself in the middle of a health crisis in a position to make a life saving impact on her community. But her job also put her in a dangerous situation. Her new commute required that she use public ...
The demand for bicycles among healthcare workers continues to grow especially in the middle of the current pandemic. Our partners from the Philippines to Madagascar to Sierra Leone are working to ensure front line workers in the medical field have the bikes they need to get to work and complete home visits. This team of doctors and nurses...
Bikes for the World recently had the opportunity to donate bikes to Afghan refugees through the Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC). The bikes will help provide transportation to grocery stores, doctors appointments or job interviews. ECDC is working to ease the resettlement of recent Afghan refugees who are making the transit...
Last month the Rotary Club of Carroll Creek honored Bikes for the World leaders Keith Oberg, Taylor Jones, and Yvette Hess as Paul Harris Fellows, in recognition of their humanitarian leadership and service in "doing good in the world". The Paul Harris Fellow Award is named for the founder of Rotary International. A $1,000 contribution to the The R...
When the Quirós family bought a bicycle from their local co-op life immediately got easier. But the family of four quickly outgrew owning just one bike. The first bike Doña Jazmín (seen above) purchased was mostly used by her husband to get to work. So for most of the day she couldn't use the bike to run errands. With the extra ...
Virginia has a successful business with her mother that allowed her to purchase this awesome Specialized Rockhopper. Doña Irma (mom) and Virginia live next to Don Álvaro's co-op but they are not members. When they heard about the shipment of bikes coming to the community they decided to look into getting one to help grow their b...
When an injury forced Don Álvaro to stop working, he wasn't sure how he could feed his family. He had always relied on farming for both. But when a shipment of bicycles arrived in his community he seized the opportunity to shift gears and turn his life around. Álvaro comes from a long line of farmers and for as long as he can remember he has w...
Last year during the pandemic the hashtag #AloneTogether was trending. Quarantining at home made us take a look at what it meant to come together to survive alone; we also realized we aren't alone. The same can be said for these small independent entrepreneurs in Costa Rica. Each one of them is succeeding in their own small business, but ...
The moment parents let go and watch their child ride away on two wheels for the first time, they realize the power of a bicycle. We often associate a bike with independence and our newest beneficiaries fully appreciate the importance of freedom and independence. We found Kahvil, Tariq, and Kevin through Free...
When we met Jeremy she didn't even know how to ride a bike, and now she is using it to help support her family! Like so many of us around the world, the pandemic upended life in her household but Jeremy used the same determination that got her on a bike several years ago to help shift her direction. As her mentor, Bikes for the Philippines pivoted ...
When Leila and Romeo received bikes from our partner Bikes for the Philippines they didn't realize they were becoming part of a family. Both beneficiaries encountered hardships over the past year and when Bikes for the Philippines learned of their struggles, they didn't hesitate to act. In fact, the green Kona and red Giant seen above are not ...
During the pandemic, transportation to and from work became an even greater challenge not only to rural communities in the Philippines, but truly everywhere, even in metro Manila. For nurses, janitors, security guards, farmers, and those in the food service industry, working from home was not an option. And when public transportation shut down, bus...
Making an old bike work is all about how you frame it. And at CESTA they really now how to re-frame it. If you look closely at the bike above (and know anything about bikes) you'll quickly see that this is a handmade 'hybrid'. The front looks more like a child's BMX style bike, while the back appears to be an adult mountain bike. Extensive racks we...
For many of our beneficiary projects around the world, bikes serve as the vehicle that drives their mission, literally and figuratively. This is very much the case for Learn Work Develop (LWD) in Rwanda, our newest recipient partner. LWD's main focus is to guide and support teen girls who are not fully supported by their families. The bike com...
Bikes for the World has added a new partner! Learn Work Develop is an NGO in Rwanda and our second supported project in this country. But Learn Work Develop itself is not NEW, even the bike project has been around for a few years. But after a pandemic sized year of delays, we are now donating bikes to this life changing organization. In fact o...
They say that hindsight is 2020. But a cyclist knows in order to keep your balance you need to keep your eyes on where you are going. And when we took a look back over the past year we realized that practice is exactly what kept us rolling through a challenging year of uncertainty. It should have been a year of celebration for Bikes...
We're back. Or rather YOU are! This month we welcomed our first (very small) service group back to the warehouse since the pandemic started. Despite the protocols and regulations required by staff and board members, these pioneers from McLean School put their heads down and their wrenches up to help us get bikes ready for our ne...
This container of bikes from October 2020 arrived in Madagascar in February slightly behind schedule. The donated bikes, in part from a collection at McLean School, were shipped last fall in hopes of arriving before the Christmas holiday. They arrived for Valentine's Day instead. The demand for bikes has only grown over the two month...
When the global pandemic stopped human life in its tracks last year, wildlife kept moving on. And this group of conservation rangers in Rwanda quickly adapted to meet life where it led them and hurdle roadblocks left in the way. They had several critical tools at their disposal: first, they were established with a solid community model wh...
This past year's health and economic crisis continues to unfold even as 2020 draws to a close. The recently signed COVID-19 relief package offers assistance to many Americans who were blindsided by closures and reduced capacities that greatly impacted their ability to provide basic needs to their families. When the pandemic began last spring, ...
This week Bikes for the World donated our 160,000th bike. Looking back at our last leg of the journey, we couldn't have done it without the commitment from our long term recycling partners. Because our source of donated bikes is so diverse we were able to keep our program rolling along at a steady pace...just not at the volume we've ...
When COVID-19 quarantines shut down businesses and crowded public spaces, rural communities around the world where food security already teeters on the edge were forced beyond the brink. Empty markets and closed ports shut down access to food in an instant. In Africa subsistence farming provides food for many families, but there is n...
As the world rushes to develop a vaccine for COVID-19, we are looking forward to saving lives and resetting life to normal. Meanwhile, many African nations are also glancing back at past successes and challenges when faced with other diseases and outbreaks, hoping to learn and respond better and faster to this pandemic. So far in terms o...
Students around the world have been heading back to school over the past few weeks unsure what their school year will actually look like. Back in March, when Covid-19 spread across the globe at an alarming rate, classrooms closed and kids found themselves parked in front of laptops and tablets on couches and kitchen tables trying to stay on to...
The global pandemic is bringing to light long-term deficiencies in smaller countries struggling to control coronavirus. Energy resources, for example, are essential to help countries like Sierra Leone respond and recover from Covid-19. Despite bringing mini power grids to health facilities several years ago, many are still operating ...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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 ...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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 ...
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...
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...
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...
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 ...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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 ...
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...
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...
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...
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-...
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...
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 ...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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 ...
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 ...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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. ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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,...
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...
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...
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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