Recipients of soccer equipment from the Westchester NY Cycle Club
In the United States, it’s a common sight to see kids in schoolyards and backyards, on the beach or on the street, get together to play a casual game of football or just to toss the pigskin around. The same is true all over the world, except in most places the ball in play belongs to the other football—soccer. The boys and girls of Okurase, in Ghana, are no different than so many around the world; they use sports to compete, make friends, and lose themselves in happy play. It’s good for health and socialization. Often, however, children in underdeveloped countries lack the resources for actual soccer equipment, so they improvise. Stones are wrapped around with duct tape, sandals substitute for athletic shoes, cardboard boxes stand in for nets. The children damage their feet and legs playing a game they love with inadequate gear. Again, unfortunately, Okurase is no different.
Last year, the students and faculty of South Brunswick (NJ) High School and the Westchester (NY) Cycle Club collected a large amount of soccer equipment that, combined with other small donations, added up to forty soccer balls and eighty-six pairs of cleats, which we placed in the second shipment to Ghana last year.
As a general rule, Pedals for Progress does not ship a great deal of sporting goods for the children in towns where we distribute bicycles. In the past, we’ve often had problems with foreign customs, so many of our overseas partners requested that we no longer include them in our shipments, even though the equipment is deeply coveted. So we now collect only a little bit every year. The inclusion of sporting goods does not meet P4P’s mission goal of economic development, but in small amounts, for the smiles on children’s faces, it is one of the best goodwill gestures. Poverty is especially difficult on children during their formative years and we believe that sports can lead to a more peaceful society.
Consult-Nord, a local Moldovan NGO established to promote local economic development in Pelinia, saw the potential results that Pedals for Progress’s bicycles and sewing machines could provide and requested to become a partner. Consult-Nord started selling bicycles this winter after receiving a shipment in late December of 2008. The good quality, affordable bicycles are now available at a shop set up by Consult-Nord, offer numerous opportunities to villagers that otherwise would be inaccessible to them.
The photographs are from the sewing workshop at Consult-Nord from the first shipment.
Read more about Consult-Nord and Moldova in the Fall 2009 InGear.
Over the years, word got around that, in addition to bicycles, we were recycling used sewing machines. This practice started somewhat by accident, and gradually became a regular part of our work. Initially, “Treadles for Progress” simply meant sending along several refurbished sewing machines with our bike shipments. Since sewing machines are encased and fit neatly in the remaining space in our shipping containers, essentially, they were stowaways with the bike shipments.
But requests from our overseas partners for sewing machines separate from bikes increased. Unfortunately, we couldn’t afford to do that. But we didn’t exactly give up on the idea either.
Shipping bikes is easier, and less costly per unit, than shipping sewing machines. First of all, bikes are light, sewing machines are heavy. Second, shipping containers come in two sizes, 20-foot and 40-foot. Forty-foot containers are the most cost effective for us, and we collect enough bikes to regularly fill them. Used sewing machines, on the other hand, are much less available than used bikes, so we can’t easily fill containers with them. In order for us to get sewing machines overseas, separate from bikes, air freight, which is very expensive, is our only option. This is why we usually send only six or seven machines at a time.
Last year we developed a partnership in Kyrgyzstan. Our partner there, a community organization, wanted sewing machines they would own and on which they could train locals who wanted to become tailors. By selling the products they made, they could help offset the shipping costs. This, along with a grant from the International Monetary Fund, enabled us to air freight 25 sewing machines to Kyrgyzstan.
The success of this program gave us the impetus to start other sewingmachine-only programs in a similar manner. We now have two more, one in Nicaragua, the other in Uganda.
In order to promote our sewing machine program more, we’ve invited several women’s groups in our region to collect sewing machines. Along with this, Vorhees High School in Vorhees, New Jersey, is enlisting their home economics club to do the same.
Uganda Sewing Machine Program
In Uganda, our partner organization is the Malaba Youth Center, which caters to both in- and out-of-school youth in this volatile region along the Uganda-Kenya border. Youth here are at especially high risk of contracting HIV/AIDS, particularly those who drop out of school. As one might expect, job opportunities in this region are few. And they are fewer still without a high school or vocational education. The sewing machines we send to the Malaba Youth Center are used specifically for vocational training. Students learn to become tailors, but they can also begin to earn an income as their skills develop. Along with this, they are also keeping themselves safe from the temptations that lure so many of their peers into troubled lives. And once they have a valuable skill, they can remain free from the poverty that would otherwise define them.
Nicaragua Sewing Machine Program
In the developing world, in the hands of someone who knows how to use one, a sewing machine means instant income. The following two profiles are fairly typical examples of how sewing machines help people in the developing world, whether in Latin America, Africa, or Eastern Europe.
Juan Carlos and Migdalia Davila
For years, Juan Carlos Davila worked by day as a receptionist at a private institution in Jinotepe. His wife, Migdalia, is a skilled seamstress. At night, he helped her with the sewing to earn extra money for their amily. His receptionist salary was barely enough for them and their 11-year-old son to get by on. As their tailoring business grew, it was their hope that one day they could come to depend on it as their sole income. But a second sewing machine, a new one, was far too costly.
In November 2008, Juan Carlos was suddenly laid off from his receptionist job. Today, he and Migdalia survive because they can both sew, and because they were able to get a second sewing machine from Pedals for Progress through our partner organization Ecobicicleta Rivas. Today at their tailor shop, they make men’s suits, women’s dresses, curtains, table linens, and they are currently searching for an employee or two to expand their business.
Elvis Cruz
Elvis Cruz is 25 years old and from Managua, Nicaragua. He was born disabled, both of his arms are severely deformed. While this provided certain challenges, it hasn’t kept Elvis from working, playing baseball, or otherwise living a full life.
Married with two young children, Elvis works as a flagman directing traffic in Managua. But his income wasn’t enough to adequately support his family. After making a public appeal on a local TV show for the opportunity to earn more money, his wife received a sewing machine from one of our partners. A talented seamstress, now she works from their home earning extra income for their family.
Our project in Sierra Leone is less than a year old, and it’s already a success despite many initial logistical difficulties. Helping us overcome these challenges is the very generous Clif Bar and Company. Because of a significant grant from the Clif Bar Family Foundation, we were able to fund the vital first shipment of bikes to Sierra Leone in July. This got the project started.
Since then, our partners in Sierra Leone have already received their second shipment (described in Greg Sucharew’s article). As with all of our programs, it’s the first shipment that enables our partners to get their revolving fund started so they can pay for subsequent shipments. In the case of Sierra Leone, shipping charges are much higher than usual, and without help from Clif Bar, we never could have met that expense. But financial assistance from the Clif Bar Family Foundation hasn’t stopped there. They recently informed us they will be providing us with a grant of $10,000 a year for the next three years! This will ensure the growth of our program in Sierra Leone, as well as enable us to open new programs that, like Sierra Leone’s, are normally too costly for us to start. As you might suspect, these programs are in the very countries that most need help.
In addition to fueling athletes and health-conscious people-on-the-go with delicious and nutritious energy bars, gels and drinks, Clif Bar does a lot of other wonderful things for the planet. You can learn more at www.clifbarfamilyfoundation.org, where you’ll also find us listed among their Long-term Partners. While you’re there, don’t hesitate to purchase an “On Your Behalf” Gift Card from their site. You can support your favorite bicycle-recycling nonprofit, or any of the other noble groups among their Long-term Partners.
My family has been involved with Pedals for Progress in one capacity or another for over a decade now. My father serves as a member of the board. My brother worked for the organization in the 1990s. I began with Pedals in 2002. And I’m sure during this span of time we’ve donated a bike or two. So the idea of bicycles reducing poverty in the underdeveloped world is not new to me. I’ve heard the stories, seen the photographs, read all about the programs, I know how valuable a bike can be to a person in need. And this winter I got the opportunity to see the benefits these bikes produce with my own eyes.
Last year Pedals for Progress began a partnership with a homegrown nongovernmental organization in Kenema, Sierra Leone, called the Center for Research Training and Program Development (CRTPD). They provide their community with a women’s health clinic, a school for the blind, youth centers, and in general try to promote better health and well-being within and around Kenema. The bikes they get from Pedals for Progress help them multiply the aid—sales of the bikes fund their other efforts, and of course, bikes help those who receive them, as well as the shops that are established to service the bikes. The economic stimulation is widespread.
In early January 2009, Pedals for Progress sent me to Sierra Leone to work with our partner there and to get footage for a film I’m making about the project. Needless to say, I was very excited—this was my first trip to Africa.
I traveled from the U.S. with Shed Jah, who is originally from Sierra Leone, and who is chairman of the CRTPD board. We left Newark, New Jersey, for London, and from London flew on to Freetown, Sierra Leone, where we were met by three of Shed’s colleagues from CRTPD, and where I encountered a crowded, dusty, trash-strewn city of mostly unpaved red-dirt streets and poorly-built shacks. A far cry from the stately London I had left only eight hours earlier.
A few days before Shed and I arrived in Freetown, a container of P4P bikes had been cleared by customs, unloaded and temporarily stored away. It remained for our contacts from CRTPD to find a way to get the bikes transported another 250 miles to Kenema, where CRTPD is located. They needed to find a driver, with a truck, willing to navigate the dangerously rough network of roads. It took three days, during which time Shed showed me around Freetown, but they finally negotiated a price and got their driver.
One of Kenema’s growing number of bike mechanics
The roads to Kenema from Freetown are nothing like roads in the U.S. Even where there’s pavement, it’s not always much smoother than the rugged reddish-orange dirt roads we mostly traveled on, which during this time of year, dry, windy, hot, meant a thick hazy cloud trailing every vehicle, leaving a fine layer of dust on everything. It took the truck over 12 hours to reach Kenema. I arrived with Shed a few hours earlier in the borrowed United Nations car we traveled in. Along the way, our driver occasionally pulled over in one of the villages lining the torn road, and seeing me, an obvious foreigner in the passenger seat, all the young children would run up to the car trying to sell fruit, soda, or bread. I was surrounded and overwhelmed, but I remember vividly one young girl among them. She was maybe eleven or twelve and kept motioning like she was putting food in her mouth, yet her hand was empty, and you could see in her face, so was her stomach. For the first time in my life I witnessed abject poverty. It was distressing.
When the truck finally arrived in Kenema at the CRTPD facility, a crowd was already waiting. They were there to help unload, and also to get first choice on the bicycles. A staffer kept count and a careful eye on the bikes as they were unloaded, sorted and stacked inside their facility. CRTPD still had to decide on prices, so distribution was delayed. The disappointed would-be customers attached notes, or tied shreds of plastic bags to frames, marking the ones they wanted to purchase.
P4P bicycles at a local school in Kenema
Over the following days, I wanted to see how bikes were used in Kenema, and whether many people had them. So I went in search of bikes and discovered a burgeoning bicycle culture. I saw bicycles for rent, along with several bike shops and bike mechanics in town whose enterprises supported their own families, and provided employment for others as well. I visited the bike retailers who sold their products along the main road in and out of Kenema. I spoke with a number of students who used to spend hours walking to school and who were now able to ride bicycles. One young man told me he used to walk for six hours to get to school and back. Bikes definitely had a significant and growing presence in Kenema.
Wine tapper in Kenema
One particular group of men I met, who make their living with the help of their bicycles, were the local palm-wine tappers. A tapper wakes at the crack of dawn and rides for miles, heading outside the main city and deep into the bush, where he scales palm trees all day collecting sap, which is fermented into an alcoholic beverage called poyo. This is dangerous work, and tappers often suffer injuries falling from trees. Once they collect the sap, the large containers they use are roped to their bikes and they begin the long trek back to the city where their clients await. I have seen as many as twelve massive bottles hanging on a bike as its rider slowly pedaled by. This is much less burdensome than carrying them without a bike; plus, a tapper can use his bike to transport a much larger load in the first place.
During my stay, I got to see the other things our partner does, much of which is now helped with revenue from CRTPD’s bicycle program and the bikes P4P sends them. They provide critical support for local groups engaged in sustainable revenue-generating activities. They also help fund women’s and youth groups, and agricultural projects, like the ones I visited in the nearby village of Kpai, where rice swamps and cassava fields were being harvested.
At the CRTPD warehouse, Kenema, Sierra Leone
Among their operations is the Vocational Training Center for the Blind, a facility where the visually impaired are housed, taught Braille (using old United Nations reports for lack of proper textbooks) and craft woven products such as baskets and mats. There is also a women’s group that, among other things, teaches orphans and runs a local daycare center. There is a vocational center where trades such as cosmetology, tailoring, electronic repair, and mechanics are taught. And CRTPD is even able to provide scholarships for some students who would otherwise be unable to attend.
The bicycles CRTPD receives play a large role in these programs and ventures. People in Kenema clearly need basic transportation, and the bikes from Pedals for Progress provide exactly that. When CRTPD receives P4P bikes, they are sold at a nominal price so the poorest people in town can afford them. The revenue from these sales offsets the shipping costs of the next shipment, as well as funds CRTPD’s other operations, such as the vocational training center and women’s group—all vital works in Kenema. And once distributed, the bikes then stimulate the local economy.
Pedals for Progress sent me to meet our partner in Sierra Leone and film their operation. For me, seeing all this work with my own eyes, for the three weeks I was there, was truly inspiring. I hope my film captures that.
Most of our projects, and indeed our very first projects, are in Latin America. Nicaragua is where we got our start, and Pedals for Progress founder, Dave Schweidenback, got the initial idea for the organization while stationed as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador. So, it’s fitting that our newest project in Kyrgyzstan, one of the most remote countries on the planet, has a Latin American connection—Roberto Hernandez, an American of Hispanic descent, who grew up in Los Angeles, California. Roberto was inspired to serve his country and fulfill his sense of patriotism by joining the Peace Corps, and he was stationed in Kyrgyzstan. A former Eagle Scout, he has always had a strong desire to help others. His Eagle Scout project saw him organize and lead a project that turned a neglected urban lot into a beautiful community garden in Los Angeles. His involvement with Pedals for Progress came about when he discovered our web site and learned about our sewing machine program.
Normally, we combine sewing machines with bike shipments, fitting them in the remaining space in overseas containers just before closing them up. Shipping them separately has been a challenge, one we overcame in working with Roberto and our new partners at SOS Children’s Villages in the Kyrgyzstan town of Cholpon-Ata. By creating products to sell with the machines they receive, the staff at SOS Kinderhof will generate funds for more sewing machines, as well as have those resources to make more sellable goods. More importantly, they’ll be able to set up a worker-owned co-op and gain ownership of their own business.
Their first shipment of 25 sewing machines arrived in Kyrgyzstan at the end of July, 2008. Hopefully this will be the start of many to follow. In the meantime, these machines will be put to immediate use at SOS Kinderhof. Now, this program will serve as a model for new sewing machine programs in other countries.
Where in the World is Kyrgyzstan?
Quick Facts
Kyrgyzstan is a landlocked country in Central Asia, bordering Kazakhstan, China, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
In 1991, Kyrgyzstan became an independent country.
Average annual income is $2,900 (USD).
It is known as the “Switzerland of Central Asia”.
Bishkek is the capital and largest city, with about 900,000 inhabitants.
Dave, Greg and Adam with the first shipment to Sierra Leone
Doing good for Clif Bar begins with their responsibly made, wholesome—and rather tasty—products, and continues with their passion for giving back. Many of us at Pedals for Progress have enjoyed Clif Bars at collections, which require considerable energy, but now Clif Bar Family Foundation has provided Pedals for Progress another form of energy, if you will, in the form of a $7,000 donation to start a new project in Sierra Leone. And earlier this July, our partner in Sierra Leone received their first shipment of bikes. Unloading the first shipment to Sierra Leone
After a decade of civil war, ethnic strife, and severe economic hardships, Sierra Leone has arrived at a stable and promising phase. With a population made up largely of subsistence farmers, in order to secure long-lasting peace and security, it’s important that rather than merely subsist, these farmers thrive. Economic stability goes hand in hand with peacefulness. And bicycles are one means to contribute toward both conditions by developing a much needed transportation infrastructure.
Currently, in Sierra Leone, there are insufficient roadways, there’s little or no public transport, and, as is the case in most developing nations, the poorest citizens must walk everywhere. Using bikes, farmers can transport goods more easily, get back and forth to their fields more often, and of course, meet their other transportation needs. When it comes to moving produce to market, it’s possible for a farmer to move as much as five times what he could normally transport on foot by using his bike as a carrier. In many cases, Pedals for Progress bikes are even modified by their new owners with large baskets, racks, and even insulated boxes to carry perishable items. Such utility is indispensable in the developing world, and is ultimately the means for a family to live a decent and productive life with greater freedom and earning potential.
Now that Clif Bar has so generously helped get our Sierra Leone project going, more bikes will follow. With any new project, the most difficult shipment of bikes is the first one. Clif Bar has helped us and our new partner past that obstacle, and further shipments will certainly follow. With each new shipment, more people—more families!—will begin to live better lives in Sierra Leone thanks to Clif Bar’s generosity.
After the CNN Heroes Program in July, 2008, Dave Schweidenback received this email.
David,
Congratulations! A well deserved recognition.
I am a living witness to the powerful incentive your bicycles provide.
In 1995–1996 because of your and P4P’s help, I literally collected all the discarded lead batteries that people in rural Eritrea throw away as litter once these were used up or expired. People had no idea how poisonous lead could be.
What I did was to offer one of your sturdy used bicycles to any one who collected and brought in at least one pound of discarded batteries. I can tell you the entire Eritrean countryside was cleared of all this deadly litter. I made sure that the collected batteries were disposed of in an environmentally sound way. There were many other wonderful uses to which we put the almost 3000 bicycles you sent to Eritrea.
Thank you for all your help
Naigzy Gebremedhin, Formerly Coordinator of Eritrea’s Environmental Management Plan
There is no sleek air-conditioned tube when you disembark from the jet at the Tema airport. Rather, you walk down a set of circa-1950 mobile stairs to the hot tarmac, and you instantly realize you’re in a third world country as the pungent smell of wood-fuel cooking stoves assaults your nose. The airport was bedecked with the red, yellow and green Ghanaian flags to celebrate Ghana’s hosting the 2008 Africa Cup Football tournament. And in the distance, what looked like a thick fog was limiting visibility. It was the time of “harmattan”, when dry winds from the Mediterranean envelope Ghana in a shroud of dust picked up during a 1,500-mile journey across the Sahara.
Gary Michel, Pedals for Progress’s Bike Collection Manager and I met our Ghanaian colleague, Kwaku Agyemang, just outside of the terminal and jumped into the taxi waiting to bring us into the city and to WEBike headquarters, our Ghanaian partners. However, our taxi was instantly brought to a crawl as we plunged into totally gridlocked traffic. This is the permanent state of Accra’s roads. At times the capital seems to have more square footage of cars than pavement. And few motorists were obeying traffic rules we take for granted here in the United States.
So it was a relief to escape the congestion of the capital on our third day there and journey into the countryside to meet recipients of the bicycles we’ve shipped to WEBike. As soon as we reached the edge of greater Accra, the perpetual traffic jam disappeared and we had open roads before us.
We were headed to the house of a native herbalist, or healer, Kwaku Osei. Driving along the main paved road to Oda, our driver and the operations manager of WEBike, Ada Annane, suddenly turned onto a red dirt, dusty path leading through the forest. There were no signs and no markings to indicate it was there. Our path not only seemed too small for a car, but it was only drivable because this was the middle of their dry season. Four or five miles later the path just ended, and there, a hundred feet ahead, were three mud shacks with thatched palm roofs. This was our destination. This was where Kwaku and his extended family lived.
The air was thick with the smell of a small still distilling palm wine into a much more potent brew. We sat on crude wooden benches under a palm frond roof in front of Kwaku’s house. On the wall behind him hung a series of talismans that he used for treating locals who sought his healing powers for a variety of ailments. All of the bikes were out in the fields while we were there, which immediately indicated how useful they were. Kwaku confirmed this, saying the bikes had a very positive effect, helping people move more produce to markets, and giving them access to buyers they didn’t have before. But it was quite clear that they needed help maintaining their bikes. As more bikes arrive in Ghana, and specifically in Kwaku’s vicinity, WEBike will train a local mechanic and help establish a local bike repair shop. More bikes are needed to make such a business viable.
Our first day in the countryside ended with a meal of FuFu, which is pounded casava dumplings in a goat stew. Our hosts Kwaku and Ada didn’t believe two white guys from New Jersey would sit and eat this traditional meal with our fingers. And although Gary, a vegetarian, avoided the meat, this turned out to be one of the best meals we had during our entire trip.
The next day, we left Kwaku and drove 200 miles from the coast to the Muslim village of Alajipapa in Ghana’s plateau region. The majority of the inhabitants here are subsistence farmers tending the land of the local king, and sharing the produce with him. This system of sharecropping is still the harsh reality for many of the rural inhabitants of Ghana. Yet it’s also a relatively harmonious arrangement.
It was Friday, the Muslim holy day, and the whole community had just finished their mid-morning prayers. All of the elders came out to greet us. Dressed in their immaculately clean, holy day finery, they were a stark contrast to the poor mud huts, and red clay streets of the village. This was obviously a very poor town, but its people had a tremendous sense of pride and serious hopes for their future. As we discussed their needs and the utility of the bicycles they had received, they said they looked upon bicycles as progress, and were very interested in receiving more. The bikes were making their lives more productive. Like those in Kwaku’s village, here too, the mobility of cycling helps them move much more produce than walking. The bikes they have are used collectively by the adults in the community. Ideally, they’d each have their own bike.
As we moved across the countryside down to Cape Coast and then back inland to Kumasi, the royal city of the Asanti Kings, we made many stops to visit our bicycles and their new owners. One such encounter was in the town of Asuman Kumansu. To get there, we drove through miles of oil palm groves and coco tree orchards—coco production for chocolate is a major cash crop—and arrived at three houses, where luckily, the owner of one of our bicycles was at home. His bike was an immaculate gray Schwinn. I knew it came through our system because there was a sticker on the seat tube advertising Jay’s Bike Shop in Westfield, New Jersey. As they do every year, the Westfield Rotary Club held a bike collection last September. Did the original owner of this bike ever imagine it would become the major means of transportation for a poor family in the middle of the Asanti highlands of Ghana?
For me this is what Pedals for Progress represents. We are the link between donors in the United States who want to help the poor of the developing world. Seeing the sticker for Jay’s Bike Shop brought that idea home to me loud and clear. Whoever donated that bike with the hope of changing someone’s life for the better did exactly that. And I was looking at the proof.
A little over ten years ago, John Elias, a Peace Corps alum who had been stationed in Jamaica, ran several collections for Pedals for Progress in his hometown in the Colorado Rockies. Doing so nearly crowded himself out of his auto repair business. Storing large numbers of bikes is one of the hazards of recycling used bikes. Since then, John has been a steady contributor to us and a friend of the organization. So, when we had the opportunity to launch a new program in Ewarton, Jamaica, John’s hometown when he was in the Peace Corps, we didn’t hesitate to call on him to help the process. And we’re grateful that he obliged. With John’s help, we were able to get this program on board.
Donate bicycles and sewing machines to developing countries
