Pedals for Progress was founded in 1991 to collect and ship bicycles. We soon realized that sewing machines fit our mission as well: They provide a relatively simple way to improve economic circumstances. And they often sit unused in the U.S. So, since 1999, P4P has shipped sewing machines along with bikes.

In 2015 we created the Sewing Peace brand as an option for carrying on our sewing machine activities separately from our bicycle activities. If only sewing machines are involved, we have multiple advantages: For collections, we can target groups more likely to have sewing machines to donate. For shipping, we can send much smaller loads—loads that do not fill a container—and so are much cheaper to ship. And for partnering, we can find groups abroad that may not have the capacity or expertise to deal with 500 bikes at a time, which is the typical load of the containers we ship, or that may not even have a bicycle program. So we are now the same single organization, but doing business both as Pedals for Progress and as Sewing Peace.