Category Archives: bicycles
Postscript to the 2018 GMRPCVs FedEx Shipment
On October 16, 2018, the FedEx truck from the Green Mountain Returned Peace Corps Volunteers got to the P4P trailers in Glen Gardner, New Jersey.
We had our regular driver and he is highly skilled. We were perfectly happy with his first try to park the truck next to our loading dock, but he was not. He wanted to be closer to the dock to make the unloading easier.
When he tried to get closer, though, he got stuck in a hidden low muddy spot in front of the trailers—wheels spinning, mud flying, truck not moving. I was sure that getting the stuck tractor-trailer out would be a huge problem.
In the meantime, we unloaded the 4 FedEx canisters: 193 bikes and 75 sewing machines.
The driver called a local towing company and the biggest tow truck I have ever seen showed up. The two drivers chatted amiably for a few minutes. Then the tow-truck driver hooked up a cable to the FedEx truck, flipped a lever on the tow track, and winched the FedEx truck to the asphalt in about 15 seconds. The tow truck never moved. What problem?
Nicaragua 2018: a Pause in Our Longest-running Program
Fall 2018 InGear
1. A 27-Year Partnership
By Dave Schweidenback
In the 1970s and 1980s there was a civil war in Nicaragua. Violence and destruction were widespread. The warring sides would burn the crops of their enemies, so hunger was also widespread. Many bridges and roads were impassable.
U.S. religious groups were sending humanitarian aid such as food and medical supplies to Nicaragua. A couple of these groups were in New Jersey, including a group at the United Methodist Church in Plainfield. I asked if I could put some of my bikes into the containers they were shipping to Nicaragua. That’s how our first bikes went to Nicaragua in 1991.
After a few of these containers had been shipped, the church groups invited their Nicaraguan partners to a meeting in New Jersey to talk about our projects. One of the Nicaraguans was Wilfredo Santana, head of the Association for the Community Development of Rivas, a town in southwestern Nicaragua. Wilfredo was talking to the group about his programs and the shipments from the U.S. and he said, “Forget all that other stuff, just send us bikes.” Gasps all around. The roads and bridges were in such bad shape, and gasoline was so scarce, that a bike was an incredible advantage in Nicaragua at that time.
The group had a picnic where I had a chance to talk with Wilfredo. He said that he didn’t have any money for the first shipment, but that if I could ship him a container of bikes at no charge, he could make enough money on the bikes to pay for the next shipment. Each shipment would pay for the next, and this could go on indefinitely. This was the origin of what we call the revolving fund idea, which we have used ever since.
To ramp up my production and to have more control over where I sent bikes, I was determined to make P4P-only shipments, independent of the other groups that were sending aid to Nicaragua. I went to the SeaLand shipping company and told them that if they would donate the cost of the first shipment, I would become a long-term customer. They made the shipment at no charge and I became a long-term customer. Since then, it has sometimes been a struggle to fund the first shipment to a new partner. But we’re still in business, we’ve shipped more than 155,000 bikes, and we’re still using our revolving funds to pay most of our international shipping costs.
End of an Era
There are several reasons a program might end: the local market for bikes can become saturated; the business might not be well run or might lose key people; the government might impose prohibitive import rules or fees; the local economy might collapse. Despite all these unhappy possibilities, our P4P program in Nicaragua has had an amazing run.
Between 1992 and 2016, we sent more than 40,000 bicycles to Nicaragua, including more than 20,000 to Rivas. Now seems like a good time to pause the program. Demand for our bikes is down because we’ve shipped so many and because of the terrible political and economic times in Nicaragua in 2018.
Given the right circumstances, we may revive the EcoBici program down the road. For now, though, we’re making the Rivas program inactive. Goodbye for now and good luck to our good friends in Nicaragua.
2. ECOBICI, Rivas, Nicaragua
By Wilfredo Santana
In the 1990s, after the war in Nicaragua, the impact on Rivas of the arrival of bicycles was very great. The country was economically destroyed, public transport was insufficient, and the unemployment rate was high. So for people with scarce resources it was extraordinarily helpful when we started selling bikes at modest prices. We call our bike business EcoBicicletas, EcoBici for short.
Our organization, the Association for the Community Development of Rivas, developed several programs in Rivas and the nearby communities of Veracruz, Buenos Aires, La Chocolata, and Tola. Our programs benefited single mothers, mothers who lost their children or husbands in the war, teachers, and workers. We had programs to build rope pumps for water wells, transport drinking water, build latrines, and build roofs for houses.
We established bike shops where we sold and repaired bikes and bike parts, and we trained bike mechanics to work in the shops.
Rivas has become somewhat more prosperous over the last couple of decades, so the use of motorcycles and autos has increased. We do not have the same demand for bikes that we had years ago, but we still sell many bikes, mostly to young people, women, and some elderly people. And the bicycle is still an economical means of transport for many.
Besides providing affordable transportation to thousands of adults and children in Nicaragua, EcoBicicletas has, for almost three decades, offered steady jobs for the three women who run the organization.
Now, in late 2018, Nicaragua is in the middle of a socio-economic crisis, including violence in the streets. The deterioration of the economy has impacted the sales of bicycles to such a degree that we fear for the survival of our business. We hope that the situation will normalize and the pace of product sales will resume.
Report from Vermont, Fall 2018
By Joanne Heidkamp
Fall 2018 InGear/InStitch
[The partnership between the Green Mountain Returned Peace Corps Volunteers and P4P goes waaaaay back. They started their P4P collections in 1999. Twelve years later, they wrote this Recipe for Collecting Bikes. In 2014, they collected their 3000th bike. Now, in fall 2018, they sent us another truckload of bikes and sewing machines. Here’s the report.]
Hi David and Lori:
Our 2018 collection on Saturday September 29th was successful. We loaded 193 bikes and 75 sewing machines into 4 FedEx containers.
The two miniature bike mechanics Noah (age 5) and Melek (age 3) arrived at 8:30 a.m. to donate Noah’s outgrown bike. They stayed on, with their parents, until we closed up the truck at 1:30. They never stopped working. They strapped pedals to the frames, they greeted people bringing bikes and sewing machines, and they looked everyone straight in the eye and said, “Will you be donating $10 for shipping by check or with cash?” Quite a few people ended up donating extra.
Unfortunately, the quality of bikes is down this year. About 100 of the bikes came from some rural churches that held mini-collections—even after we eliminated the bikes with obvious rust, there are still quite a few marginal bikes in the load.
We are also feeling the impact of Old Spokes Home, a local bike shop plus non-profit that has expanded considerably in the past couple of years. They hold several big collections a year. At this point they are probably skimming 500–800 high-quality bikes a year from the local donation pool. It’s hard for us to compete with their impressive local accomplishments in providing transportation and skills to local teens, refugees, people who can’t drive or don’t have cars, guys on parole, etc. It’s an excellent project. They have donated bikes to P4P when they have a surplus. They get bikes from college campuses in the spring, and from local police departments—both are sources we can not tap into because we don’t have storage, and we don’t want to have to fundraise the $10 per bike.
We also loaded 4 cases of brand new bicycle seats donated by Terry Bicycles, a women-focused bike clothing and accessories company located in Burlington. Our contact at Terry is Colin Sturgess, the operations manager. Colin was the manager at FedEx who first provided us free shipping to New Jersey, back around 2000. He saw our truck in the KMart parking lot last year and left a note sending good wishes. We followed up, and this year he invited us to do outreach at Terry’s annual tent sale in August, and made the offer of donated bike seats as well.
The quality of the sewing machines is up. Half of the machines were collected by Mary O’Brien in Springfield, who checks each one carefully before turning them over to us. The other half came in on Saturday—a lot of nice 1980s portables in their own cases, as well as several Bernina overlock sergers, which are fantastic for sewing knits. We also loaded a 1930s Singer with a knee controller.
Mary O’Brien works in solid waste management for the Southern Windsor County Regional Planning Commission, southeast of Burlington. She has been collecting sewing machines for us since 2014. This year she collected 36 machines that she had individually tested. The solid waste district covers the $10 per item. We are in awe of her!
Fall 2018: New Partner in Tanzania: the Matabaiki Olere Organization
By Giza Mdoe
Fall 2018 InGear/InStitch
[In October 2018, P4P shipped a container with 469 bikes and 119 sewing machines to our new partner in Tanzania, the Matabaiki Olere Organization. Giza Mdoe is our contact there. Here he introduces himself, his region, and his plans for two projects: one with sewing machines and one with bikes.]
The Matabaiki Olere Organization is based in the town of Arusha, Tanzania. Arusha is a tourist hub, 60 miles from Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, and 100 miles from the Serengeti Plains and the Ngorongoro Crater, the world’s largest caldera, home to the world’s only tree-climbing lions. The Ngorongoro Conservation Area also contains the Olduvai Gorge, one of the most important paleoanthropological sites in the world.
I grew up in Kenya, where I was raised by a foster family. They live in Boston now.
Sewing-machine Project: Fabrics of Society (FOST)
Fabrics of Society (FOST) is a project for training single mothers in sewing, tailoring, design, and marketing.
The sewing machines will all go into a production line for various items to be sold in country and exported, including to the U.S. At the moment I enroll school drop-outs who are single mothers. We have five sewing machines and the women make sandals as well as clothes. In this country when a girl gets pregnant in school she is expelled and is not allowed back into school even after her child is born, worsening the cycle of poverty.
The girls learn to use the machines free of charge. They take a percentage of the sales. We donate books and supplies to local schools where our girls give testimonials to help with awareness.
Depending on availability of sewing machines and trainers, FOST aims to enroll 180 women in the training program and 20 tailors (who have previous experience). We will hire 2 teachers and 3 training assistants.
The trainees will attend 3-hour classes 3 times a week. The training is done in 4 stages, each lasting 3 months with each stage marking a specific level of proficiency. A small enrolment fee is charged to give the members a sense of responsibility and ownership.
The initiative is done in partnership with VETA, the Tanzanian Vocational Education and Training Authority, who will issue certificates of achievements to the graduates. The project will start in Dar es Salaam and then move to other regions.
Besides technical training in tailoring, the initiative provides basic life skills in health, nutrition and sanitation. Focus is family planning as well as the importance of pre- and post-natal clinics, breastfeeding, balanced diets and personal hygiene.
Bicycle Project: Watu wa Delivery (WWD)
Watu wa Delivery (WWD) is Swahili for “delivery people”. It is designed to create employment for impoverished youth in urban areas. Employees will use bicycles to deliver food to urban residential areas and mail to commercial centers.
I expect to put at least 200 bikes into the delivery business project and sell the rest to raise the U.S. $6000 for our next shipment. Since I have never done such a project before I don’t know how long it will take but am assuming a couple of months.
The program will begin in Mbeya, which has a large population of urban unemployed youth.
The initiative will hire a delivery crew of 1500 and a dispatch and maintenance crew of 500. We will establish 50 Dispatch Centres. Each Dispatch Centre will have 10 bikes and each bike will be assigned between 2 and 3 delivery persons to work half- and full-day shifts according to their availability.
WWD will also establish telecom, internet, and networking services. Examples of these services are low-cost mobile calls and texts, marketing for sellers, a mobile app and a WWD website for buying, selling, and customer rating of sellers.
Besides job-specific activities, WWD will conduct monthly outreach programs for youth providing education on sexual health, drug abuse, youth rights, hygiene, health and nutrition, environment, vocational training and accelerated learning options.
Report from Kosovo, Fall 2018
By Kushtrim Gojani
Fall 2018 InGear
Kujtim Mehmeti is one of the co-owners of an auto-repair shop called “D-Max”. The service is located near Vushtrri, a town about 10 miles from the capital, Prishtina. Owing to his profession, Kujtim inevitably loves wheels and speed. He is very fond of bicycles, too, to the point that he still cannot part with his very first BMX bike—on which he learned to cycle and which he still keeps in the attic of his house.
However, when Kujtim (whose name means souvenir, or a memory) bought a big black and green P4P Huffy bike from the GoBike store on July 16th, he didn’t just buy it for himself. He primarily bought it for the employees of his auto shop, Altin Istrefi and Muhamed Shabani. Up until then, they used to hop in the car for everything. As the shop is located by the main road from Pristina to Vushtrri, they had to use the car whenever they needed to go into town or to a store for supplies or food. They have now replaced the car with the bicycle—and they are loving it! Kujtim hasn’t really crunched the numbers to know how much he is saving on fuel costs by using the bike instead of the car. But the benefits to the environment and to their health are invaluable.
On Sundays, when the shop is closed, Kujtim and his friend Alban Kasumi (who also bought his bike from GoBike) go cycling for 10 miles just to keep fit. Kujtim was the first to buy his bike. Alban bought his the very next day, after spending a sleepless night from the fear that his favorite Kent 700 Roadtech bike might be sold. Both love the effect the bicycles are having on their fitness and general well-being. They can’t wait for Kosovo’s infrastructure to recover to enable people to change—where possible—from cars to bicycles.
Marjana Neziraj, whom her family and friends call Jana, is 9 years old. She lives in Pristina with her mom Kristina, dad Bruno, and her brother Daniel. Jana loves being outdoors. She thought she liked only swimming during the hot summer months, but after her father bought her the Venus Rock Candy bike on August 1st, from the GoBike store, she discovered how much she misses cycling too. Whilst she was off school during the summer break, she used her bike almost every day. The bike was a tool for Jana and her favorite doll of more than 7 years, Beba Trashe, to go for a ride around the neighborhood, or to go to visit her grandfather, aunts, and uncles. Now that school has started, her father often takes the bike to school when he goes to collect her. Jana then rides home, under the guidance of her father, as Pristina is not yet a cycling friendly city for adults, let alone children. Jana’s one regret is that her father works very hard and does not have time to go riding bicycles with her in Germia Park, just on the outskirts of the capital city. However, she is determined to carry on cycling, on her own if needs be. She is a very determined girl, and the bike is not only helping her with mobility, but also to learn to be independent.
Fall 2018: Bike School and Bike Jobs in Tirana, Albania
By the Ecovolis Team
Fall 2018 InGear
It was a Saturday afternoon when the activists of EcoVolis went out as usual to patrol the new bicycle lanes here in Tirana, Albania. In one lane there was a motorcycle driving fast, in another a car that had completely blocked the bike lane. A total of 12 miles of lanes built in a very short time by the head of PASS/Ecovolis, now titled the “Bike Mayor”. PASS and Pedals for Progress are the right combination to turn Tirana into the City of Bikes.
In just a moment we counted over ten bikers using the lanes. It was a rare emotion for the activists who have fought for ten years for protected lanes. Now these lanes are flowing rivers of bikers. Just like boats on true rivers, these bikers go about their days on these lanes.
We take a look back in time: How did we get here? The collaboration with Pedals for Progress gave the opportunity to PASS, the mother organization of EcoVolis, to undertake tens and hundreds of activities with the mission to return bikes to Tirana. It was the start of this partnership in 2000 that decided how things were going to be for the bikers of Tirana today. And how beautiful things are!
There are daily bikers for the Day Care, Two-wheels Academy, Free the Lanes, weekend biking, tour guides for guests, bikes for kids who cannot afford them, bikes for the elderly and the communities that need them. One great example is the transformation of 30 bikes from P4P into cargo bikes for the Romani community to work in the recycling field (a total of 60 new jobs).
The number of bikers in Tirana has grown tenfold. At the EcoVolis Service shop a lot of bikers come to repair or exchange their bikes for better ones from the U.S.A. This led us to start to train young girls and boys to repair bikes in order to open more EcoVolis Service points and also to create new jobs for more people.
Now that there are more than 7000 bikes from P4P, EcoVolis has another ambitious mission: to open a bike school. Taking as examples other countries where bikes are ubiquitous—the Netherlands and Denmark, for example—Tirana is also at the point in which it is opening the first schools for bikes, with the full support of P4P. This school, now in the planning stages, is expected to add 3000–4000 bikers to the lanes per year.
To change movement in a city with over 1 million inhabitants is the story of the success of a strong partnership like the one between U.S.A./P4P and Albania/PASS. When we look back we cannot believe that fate and time approached us with such a virtuous organization, whose support and energy helped us to create so many jobs for the community and to make a two-wheel revolution for our city. Thank you, Pedals For Progress. You are already a Nobel Prize organization.
Report from Vietnam, Fall 2018
By Nguyen Hanh
Fall 2018 InGear
Nhi Cao, 10 years old, was born into a poor family with five children in a village in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. The family lives in a dilapidated house that was built in 2008 with the help of generous donors. Her father, 48 years old, has been working in construction for more than ten years, and can make only irregular visits home from his far-away construction sites. Her mother, 42 years old, earns income for the family with all kinds of work, including selling lottery tickets. Though she is the youngest child, Nhi helps her mother with the house work, and earns a little income by knitting, feeding chickens, and harvesting vegetables after school.
Two of Nhi’s sisters are already out of school after they completed their secondary education, but are still struggling with finding vocational training programs. Most of the time, Nhi and her sister and brother walked more than 2 miles to school while her mother also walked around 25 miles per day selling lottery tickets, earning $10–$15. Nhi’s mom usually works from dawn to dusk but is still unable to meet the family’s expenses. In early 2018 the mother was provided with a micro-loan from The Dariu Foundation (TDF) to invest in raising 100 chickens with the hope of earning some profit and enabling her to afford a new bike by the end of the year.
In June 2018, The Dariu Foundation received a container of bikes from Pedals for Progress (P4P) and Nhi was among the eligible recipients. After TDF refurbished the bike, they sold it to Nhi in June 2018. TDF also used some spare parts from the P4P container to fix Nhi’s old bike.
Nhi and her brother share the P4P bike to ride to school in the morning. The third child uses the repaired bike to ride to school in the afternoon. Nhi’s mother uses the old bike in the morning and the P4P bike in the afternoon, and as a result has nearly doubled her income from her lottery ticket sales.
At the end of August, her mother got a second loan of $400 from Dariu, which, together with the profit of $230 from selling the chickens, she invested in raising a cow. She expects that she could earn $800 from this business by end of 2019, along with an annual profit of around $2,400 from selling lottery tickets. This money should help her repair the house and invest in her children’s education.
In July 2018, Nhi joined Dariu’s coding skill training program (Scratch) for secondary students. She completed a project at the end of the training course, and entered her project in Dariu’s competition among primary students. Unexpectedly, Nhi was among the top ten project winners of Dariu Scratch Summer Camp 2018.
Nhi studies hard and is one of the best students in the class. “Thank you Dariu for giving me such a beautiful and good bicycle. It not only helps me to ride to school but also my mom in her business,” said Nhi. Her mother explained, “I don’t have to use the broken old bike all the time. I am very grateful. I hope in the future my children can continue their education and that Nhi can achieve her dream of becoming a doctor”.
July 2018: Kosovo #1 Arrival Report
By Kushtrim Gojani
Dear David,
Hope you are well.
Many many apologies for this late reply. The reason I am writing this late is due to a ton of work dealing with bicycles to bring them to good use. The container honestly caught me a little off guard. I knew it would be a container with 450 bicycles but I guess I did not prepare for the work required to assemble them. I am aware of the challenge and sacrifice it took P4P to establish this project in Kosovo, and I am very thankful. This very fact gave me extra pressure, because I don’t want to let you down and I want to make the GoBike & P4P partnership successful.
I managed to clear the container on 11 July 2018 after only 2 nights at customs. This was my first import experience with Kosovo customs, and we had a few problems that I hope we can handle better in the future.
We are a little cash poor, so I could not hire extra mechanics for the bicycles. I have been working intensively myself with the support of friends and family to prepare the bicycles (many of us were inexperienced) and this kept me away from all office work. Apologies once again for responding late.
Now some good news 😃
From the moment we unloaded the container we were very pleased with the reaction of the people here. They appreciate the quality of the bicycles and are eager to buy them. They are quite surprised to see that we brought American bicycles to Kosovo, and they are happy to find bikes that vary from quite inexpensive to professional quality, so there is something for everyone! So far, we see quite a lot of interest in children’s bikes.
The location of the GoBike warehouse is very strategic. It is in the main road between the capital Prishtina and a famous city in north Kosovo called Mitrovica, so people who travel this road and families who live nearby are already stopping by our shop.
We managed to sell 25 bicycles so far, but we are having some overhead. We gave top priority to security so we installed cameras and hired a guard to look after the bicycles during the night.
I will get back to you again once we manage to prepare all the bicycles (another 250 to go) and I will keep you informed about GoBike news and events.
Here is our facebook page.
Thank you ever so much.
All the best,
Kushtrim
Report from The Dariu Foundation, Vietnam, June 2018
By Hanh Nguyen (General Manager of The Dariu Foundation, Vietnam)
The Dariu Foundation (TDF) was established in 2002 in Switzerland with its mission to empower low-income families with microfinance and education. Over the past 15 years, we have advanced the mission objectives by providing access to affordable and readily available microfinance services to thousands of rural low-income women, who are considered as unbankable, in Vietnam and Myanmar. Since 2007, we have provided more than 14,000 scholarships, as well as notebooks, school books, pens, uniforms, rice and bicycles to the disadvantaged and neediest students among the poorest families in the rural areas to prevent them from dropping out of schools at an early age.
We have had fruitful cooperation with international partners, of which Pedals for Progress (P4P) is the organization that has shipped us the most bikes. So far, three containers of bikes and sewing machines have been donated, benefiting around 1,500 families in the rural areas.
We are looking forward to a strong partnership so TDF and P4P can go further with comprehensive social projects in Vietnam.
Case Study in Vietnam
Binh Nguyen was born into a poor family in the mountainous district of Dong Nai province. He is now a secondary-school student, grade 6. One year ago, because of a kidney problem, his mom’s health went bad, and all housework was put on his shoulders and his dad’s. Besides doing all the housework, he got a part-time job as a fruit deliverer to earn some income for the family.
Every morning, Binh had to wake up early, preparing breakfast for his mom and two sisters before he took a four kilometer (2.5 mile) walk to school. When the kids were small, the dad took them to school, but now they have to walk. The family is too poor to afford a bicycle, so two kids had to walk by themselves. After school, Binh again walks home to help his dad harvest fruit, and to do the cooking and other housework. “I was sick and unable to do any job, even a little housework. So Binh has to do all the housework. He is a hard-working and good son. This year he was awarded the best-student prize. I am so proud of him,” said his mom.
In June 2018, he is among 500 students to receive scholarships of bikes donated by P4P via The Dariu Foundation in Vietnam. “I am very happy with my first bike. Now I can take my sister to school with me. And we no longer have to walk to school,” said Binh.