[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!
Pedals for Progress is proud to announce a unique new collection partner: Habitat for Humanity of Warren County New Jersey. The partnership is due to Daryl Detrick of the computer science faculty at Warren Hills Regional High School (WH) in Warren, New Jersey. Daryl is also director of the WH Chess Club. He and his students have been volunteering at both Habitat for Humanity and Pedals for Progress for the last few years.
For the past several years, the Chess Club has gotten a number of bicycles from Habitat for Humanity for their annual Pedals for Progress bicycle collection. Habitat for Humanity has been collecting more bicycles than they can sell. P4P’s challenge is to get a minimum $10 donation with each bicycle and sewing machine; this donation is a fundamental part of our business model. To pick up a bicycle or sewing machine, prepare it for shipping, truck it to the warehouse, and pack it away in the warehouse so that is ready to be shipped, we spend an average of $20. Every time someone donates a bicycle or sewing machine with $10 we still need to independently raise another $10. We refuse a lot of bikes that don’t come with money — it is better to collect perhaps fewer and stay in business than collect a whole bunch and be bankrupt.
In 2018 Daryl got into a conversation with the Habitat county director Ben Eskow. Daryl mentioned that he might have to take fewer bikes because he was having trouble raising the $10 per bike that Pedals for Progress needs just stay in business.
Ben met with his staff and board at Habitat for Humanity. They were keenly aware that they were receiving many many more bicycles and sewing machines than their resale store could possibly use. Habitat for Humanity also has some discretionary funding that they can use for international programs. The board of Habitat for Humanity of Washington County decided that they would contribute the $10 per bike and sewing machine to Pedals for Progress and Sewing Peace. Therefore P4P/SP will now be able to pick up their extra bikes and sewing machines on a regular basis.
This is a wonderful collaboration between two institutions searching for a way to help the poor have a better life. Pedals for Progress has a new source of bicycles, which we hope may produce up to 250 bikes this first year. From the perspective of Habitat for Humanity, they have a volume problem and they have found a way to solve it within their mandate by partnering with Pedals for Progress and Sewing Peace. Win-win for the betterment of all.
[The Norristown, Pennsylvania, Rotary Club is one of our most successful long-time collectors. We just got this end-of-season report. They are already collecting for next year.]
Janet Steiner is a friend of the club who makes numerous donations to our collection each year. She runs ads in her church bulletin asking for bike donations, and she stores donated bikes in her garage.
Ginny Politz is the owner/operator of Bikesport in Trappe, PA. Bikesport makes several deliveries to us each year of trade-in bikes that people no longer want.
We have the use of a trailer generously donated by G. L. Sayre trucking in Conshocken, PA. We process the bikes and store them in the trailer until the next P4P collection. We already have 45 bikes and 10 sewing machines.
Our last two collections have netted 97 and 95 bikes. Our next collection is May 19, 2018, at the Norristown Area High School lot during West Norriton Community Day.
Our 27th calendar year collecting bicycles came to a close today on Veterans Day, November 11th, 2017. On a below-freezing morning, the Bunnvale Assembly of God together with the North Hunterdon Rotary Club collected 106 bicycles and 8 sewing machines — a great result in any weather. We would like to thank all of the participants, and especially Jim Murray, who was instrumental in making this collection happen.
There is a strange dynamic for end-of-season collections in the fall: Once we get to November, people are really thinking about getting their car into the garage, and sometimes unused bikes are in the way, so we have a better chance of collecting a lot of bikes. On the other hand we also have a greater chance of bad weather. Cold weather was obviously not a problem for today’s collection.
I would like to personally thank all of the collectors who have helped make 2017 a record-breaking year, with 12% growth in the collection of bikes and an amazing 55% growth for sewing machines. And to all of you springtime collectors, the time is now to book your spring 2018 collection to get the date you want. Get in touch with Lori at 908-638-4811 or lori@p4p.org.
We have been preoccupied with an incredible fall collection season. However, our new end-of-the-year newsletter is almost ready and we will be getting it to you very soon!
You knew the weekend of June 24, 2017, was going to be action packed when you saw the P4P trailers and parking lot. The Triton 40-foot container had been delivered for our 11th shipment to Albania. The Avis rental truck was ready for the final collection of the spring season. And Dave’s Mini and a couple of volunteer vehicles were parked out front.
Sewing Machines to Tanzania
We had collected enough sewing machines for a shipment of two pallets to Tanzania. Our tinkerers Simon Rosenstein and Dennis Smyth had worked tirelessly over the last few months getting the machines into good working order. Several dozen machines were boxed and ready to pack. We had just made the final arrangements with our partner in Tanzania, the She Can Foundation. The Summer 2017 InStitch newsletter has this post about a recent trip around Tanzania by She Can founder Sophia Mwakagenda, a Member of the Parliament of Tanzania.
On Friday, we prepared the two pallets. We stacked the boxed machines on a pallet, leaving room for a couple of sets of the heavy treadle stands. We nestled the treadle stands inside the walls of boxed sewing machines, put a cardboard roof over the treadles, and added another layer of boxed machines. We added some cardboard padding, roped it up, then shrink-wrapped the whole thing into a neat 4-foot cube. We shipped a total of 68 machines in the two pallets.
Bon voyage, sewing machines. See you in Tanzania!
Eleventh Container to Albania
Also on Friday, we pre-loaded 53 adult bikes, 25 kids’ bikes, and some sewing machines into the container bound for Albania. The pre-load lets us take care of any special packing before the big push on Saturday. This time we used the pre-load to pack very carefully a handful of spectacular bikes, including that famous carbon-fiber Specialized Roubaix. In the photos you can see that it has its own personal cardboard stall. These bikes will go to people who love cycling and are willing to pay a high price for a special bike. Our partner in Albania, PASS/Ecovolis, will be extremely happy to get some high-end bikes they can sell to help support their programs.
On Saturday, the real loading crew took over and did the hard work. They started at 7am to try to avoid the heat of the day, when the interior of the container attains advanced sauna status. Some sections of the container get three rows of bikes stacked on top of each other: two rows of adult bikes and one row of kids’ bikes. To pack the top row, you climb into a sweltering 3-foot niche with the broiling roof of the container blistering your flesh. Then you contort yourself into the most awkward position you can think of and take ridiculously heavy kids’ bikes from the person passing them up. Then you push them into position, using hands, feet, and any other body part that proves useful. The idea is always to get as many bikes as possible into the container—the shipping cost is fixed, so every bike adds to the bottom line.
When the container is almost full, we close one of the two container doors and jam in the last few dozen bikes, jig-saw like. Our partners are well aware of our packing methods, so they open the container doors gingerly, hoping not to be crushed by an avalance of bicycles.
The final count for the Albania container: 426 adult bikes, 100 kids’ bikes, 25 pairs of pedals, 9 saddles, 12 baskets, 25 helmets, 9 sets of training wheels, 2 bike racks, 4 wheels, 8 tires, and a few other miscellaneous bike parts and accessories, plus 15 sewing machines. That’s a full container!
Our Albania partner, PASS/Ecovolis, is one of our most active partners. They have a bike shop and a bike sharing program in Tirana, the capital of Albania. They also have projects in reforestation, childhood literacy and nutrition, and low-income housing.
As for sewing machines, Ened Mato, head of Ecovolis, tells us that they now have extra importance. Partly thanks to Ecovolis efforts in political persuasion, Tirana merchants now must charge a small fee for plastic shopping bags. Yet another PASS group, Trasta o Nona, manufactures fabric shopping bags, using Sewing Peace machines. The PASS shopping bags should sell much better with the new fee on plastic bags.
Flemington Collection
While the crew was loading the Albania container, Gary was running the final collection of the spring 2017 season. The Presbyterian Church of Flemington and the Flemington Rotary Club collected 42 bikes and 19 sewing machines.
Summer Break
So that was our big weekend: we shipped 68 sewing machines to Tanzania on Friday, finished loading 526 bikes and 15 sewing machines for Albania on Saturday, and also on Saturday collected 42 bikes and 19 sewing machines in Flemington. Well done all around.
The shipments to Tanzania and Albania emptied the trailers of most bikes and sewing machines, but there are a few left as a start on our next shipments, which we will make later in the year.
Our collections resume in September. Get in touch if you’d like to host one. Have a great summer.
I wrote an article for the Spring 2011 InGear that began as follows:
I was prompted to call Pedals for Progress in September of 2002 after I read a small article in Hope Magazine (long since out of business). The article told the story of Dave Schweidenback launching Pedals for Progress following his experience in the Peace Corps and referenced the 57,000 bicycles that had, at that point, been shipped to partners in sixteen countries.
So, to take you back in time a bit, it was a year beyond 9/11 and our nation was on the verge of war in the fall of 2002. I was feeling a burning need to do something positive and meaningful, ideally involving my husband and two children who were then ten and twelve. The article was so inspiring that I immediately called P4P and said I wanted to organize a collection. Despite my being further from High Bridge (in northwestern Connecticut) than any previous collection, the response was positive and I was encouraged to organize a spring collection. I ultimately spoke with Dave and explained that I really didn’t want to wait until spring. He was reluctantly convinced and our first Pedals for Progress collection was held at Holcomb Farm, an arts and environmental center, in Granby, CT, on December 7, 2002. A very chilly 42 bikes were collected and processed that day by an enthusiastic group of volunteers who have shown up every year since.
Five years from the time of that first article, we just held our 15th collection, with a grand total of over 2,000 bikes and more than 100 sewing machines collected to date. While making a difference for individuals and communities in the developing world has always been at the heart of our 15 years of collecting, there has been an unexpected benefit in the community created here at home. Many donors are moved by the opportunity to build a bridge from our small Connecticut town and to touch lives abroad and offer to help spread the word about future collections. Our dedicated group of volunteers has grown to include a long list of folks who have shared email addresses and offer to post flyers and share through social media each year. Stories shared by donors, like that of the bike of a lost and beloved daughter, the sewing machine from a mother or grandmother, have created meaningful moments and stories that have fed and inspired our group of volunteers.
This year, we welcomed two new volunteers who took the lead in coordinating the Granby collection. Kate and Rachel are high school students and National Honor Society Members at the local high school. They eagerly publicized the event and brought in a new group of student volunteers. Kate and Rachel plan to use this year’s experience to mentor two students from the class behind theirs, continuing to grow a committed community of young people.
Being part of the P4P community for 15 years has been a privilege and great source of joy. We here in Granby look forward to gearing up for many more!
The Morris County Municipal Utilities Authority (MCMUA) has hosted a used bike and sewing machine collection for 14 consecutive years since 2003. The Pedals for Progress collection program aligns with the MCMUA’s overall vision to reduce waste, reuse items, and build a culture for sustainability. In those 14 years, the MCMUA has collected over 3,676 bikes and 26 sewing machines through the programs run in conjunction with Pedals for Progress and Sewing Peace.
Some people may be turned off by the idea of working in the solid waste field. Trash, you ask? Yes, trash, litter (which is different from trash), recyclables, hazardous waste, and vegetative waste. A world of waste that is so wildly interesting, there is never a dull moment! I have worked for the MCMUA for over 20 years in the recycling division and I have learned a lot about the behavior of people and our obsession with throwing things ‘away’. Most people do not think about where their waste ends up, or how much energy, natural resources, pollutants and fossil fuels were used or created in the process of making these items and what it takes to properly dispose of them.
The solid waste hierarchy lists waste reduction at the very top. The federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has created a hierarchy which ranks various waste management strategies from most to least environmentally preferred. The hierarchy places emphasis on reducing, reusing, and recycling as key to sustainable materials management. It is important to purchase only items we really need. The second listing is reuse! It means to use again or more than once, give something a new purpose. Because we are a throw-away society it is difficult to get some people to understand the concept of reuse. Most of us want instant gratification by purchasing the latest, the biggest, the shiniest, the absolute BEST there is to buy, and quickly get rid of items that no longer suit our needs, wants or whims.
This brings me to the lowly used bike standing on the curb, out for trash collection. It has a flat tire and a few scratches on the rear fender. It is not the prized possession it used to be when it was brand new. To the untrained eye it is a meager shadow of its former glory. Don’t judge this discarded bike that is out for trash. With a little elbow grease and a new tire this gem will become the new transportation for a student who currently walks 6 miles in order to get to school! It will provide the liberty and luxury to ride to school in less time than walking, and perhaps provide a ride to a passenger so he or she can avoid the long walk as well. Pedals for Progress, with the assistance of their partner agencies, delivers the chance of a lifetime to those who need it most. Some people don’t have any means of transportation and this opportunity can make such a positive impact on their lives.
On May 21, 2016, the Mountainside New Jersey Rotary Club hosted the first ever stand-alone collection of sewing machines for Sewing Peace. We collected 38 sewing machines in total!
For the second time, Dave has asked me to write an update on the “Iowa operation”. I would report that P4P in Iowa is very much a mixed bag as we begin the 2015 collection season. On one hand, we are enthusiastic, have established a recognizable “brand”, have many supporters, and the supply of used bikes and volunteers is deep. On the other hand, we do not have a “trucker” at this time!!!
Looking back 10 years, I now understand Dave’s business-like approach to moving bikes. At the time, I was young, more naïve, and certainly blindly idealistic. Our biggest hurdle is to find transport for the 929 miles from Dubuque to High Bridge, New Jersey. So we are not going to give up. Our volunteers, our sponsors, and our supporters in Iowa are 100% committed to the work of P4P. Yes, we are idealistic out here in the Heartland. Somehow, I believe we will have the big wheels rolling east again in 2015 with lots of bikes onboard.
Thanks, Dave, P4P staff, and all the P4P supporters for your trust and belief in the Iowa Connection
Donate bicycles and sewing machines to developing countries
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.
