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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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 ...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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 ...
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...
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...
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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