Featured Volunteer: Chen Nan Family

Allow us to introduce Cypress, Xi, and Ying. When Cypress needed service hours for school they looked over options suggested through her school and lucky us, they chose Bikes for the World. They've been pretty regular volunteers for the last couple months.

The first day they showed up Ying was dressed to impress, it looked like she may have just stepped out of a board room. She may have even been wearing a nice WHITE shirt. We thought maybe her parents were just dropping off Cypress but first wanted to check out the place where they would be leaving their daughter for the next two hours. They said show us what to do...and then they all grabbed wrenches and greasy bikes and got to work!

They may have been taking advantage of the last days of summer, trying to rack up service hours for Cypress...but they could not have arrived at a better time. During the school year we use our school groups to keep this front room manageable as we continue to pick up bikes week after week. It tends to build up. We get nervous toward summer, knowing the school groups will be on summer break. BUT cue the summer camps! We now have a steady stream of summer camp crews that move us through the summer months.

That is until August when all the groups are on a hiatus. It's nice for staff to get a break from all the warehouse group work, but the bikes never stop coming so that just means we are overwhelmed with bikes and in danger of running out of space. If you've ever been to a Thursday night volunteer session who know who Ron is, he's a volunteer that rarely misses a week. But there's only so much Ron can handle.

We have several family crews that work with us fairly regularly and we can't say enough about how much we love seeing that. Not only do they get a lot done in a short amount of time, divide and conquer as a team, but it's also such a treat to see families work together in service. It's good for our souls.

We know Xi counts bikes. He can tell you how many he accomplished on any given night and whether or not he's on par from last week, or working a little sluggish (his account not ours). We don't know if they compete against each other...pretty sure it's just a personal goal. Reluctantly we usually have to kick them out every week. It's really hard to stop free labor, especially families we enjoy. One week they were so close to emptying the room we just kept working until we did! 

It's rewarding to see that back wall empty. And all the volunteers like to feel like they made progress, that usually is measured in how the room looks. Unfortunately, especially for Ron who comes early, on Thursdays that's a tall order. The room usually looks the same when we leave Thursday evening as it does when we arrive in the morning. That's because Simon usually brings in a huge batch of bikes every Thursday afternoon. But that also means we are compacting about 80 bikes every week. At least when the Nan-Chen family is there. They don't seem to mind the grease, they don't love the  heat and humidity, but one thing they could do without is the mosquitoes. You and me both!

We loved working with a group of friendly people, getting our hands dirty while enjoying some nice music, and most importantly, nothing is more rewarding than putting a smile on people's face :) We are very grateful for the opportunity.

-Ying Nan