Category Archives: Peace Corps

bicycles, InGear - The Newsletter of P4P, Peace Corps

Duke Farms and Vermont, 2024

Summer 2024 Newsletter

While the “progress” of Pedals for Progress is best shown through our international programs, the success of these programs relies on our collection efforts in the United States. Pedals for Progress acquires 90 percent of our bicycles from our collection drives, which are generally self- sufficient with the suggested donation we request with each item. Our collection drives are our bread and butter, allowing us to collect the items we send overseas while simultaneously fundraising for their shipment.

Being the “bike guys,” we often get calls about random pockets or “piles” of bikes that appear due to various circumstances. These bikes often surface at universities, police departments, apartment complexes, municipal centers, and beyond, and often lack the additional monetary donation needed for their removal and shipment. While we try our best to answer these calls, it is an area of our organization that needs continued financial support. Despite the challenges, these opportunities often yield the best results in terms of bicycle procurement, both in quantity and quality.

I’d like to highlight a couple of calls we answered this spring from two great collaborations that helped us acquire particularly unique “piles” of bikes. These stories showcase the incredible people behind them and the importance of recycling bicycles. However, financial restrictions often slow these efforts. I hope to raise awareness of these large pockets of bikes, the abundant manpower and passion to handle them, and how additional financial support helps us manage these projects professionally and sustainably.

Duke Farms

On April 18th, 2024, Pedals for Progress accepted an in-kind donation of 28 high-end bikes from Duke Farms in Hillsborough, NJ. The bicycles donated by Duke Farms were phased out of their rental fleet offered to the public visiting the conservation grounds. Bikes deemed unfit due to wear and tear need to be cycled out quickly by Duke Farms for liability reasons. Being high- quality, name-brand bicycles, these items were still very desirable and great for our partner programs overseas. Although the bikes did not come with a monetary donation for their removal, processing, and warehousing, this was offset by the generosity of our donors and a well-placed grant. These items have been shipped to our program in Belize, where they will continue to be used by 28 motivated individuals.

In addition to the 28 bicycles from Duke Farms, the charitable roots of the conservation program, in the image of Deloris Duke, continued with an additional 4 adult-sized tricycles also retired from their rental fleet. Only needing minor repairs, some air in the tires, and a few bolts adjusted, the trikes were in fantastic condition. These trikes, along with the 28 bicycles, were used frequently throughout the year by the thousands of tourists Duke Farms receives. The functionality of a well-made bicycle remains valuable even after heavy use.

With thousands of miles left on these bicycles, they will prove even more useful as they came at a perfect time, just ahead of our shipment of bicycles to Sierra Leone, for the Slow Food International Kola Nut Farm. Rural Kola Nut farmers, often held back by long walks to market, face time constraints as their nuts and other fruits spoil quickly. Providing these farmers with bicycles will help them transport their produce to market much faster, preventing waste. The tricycles, often rare at our typical collections, will be perfect food haulers with their wide base and large baskets on the rear.

From one farm to the next, we have repurposed and recycled these bicycles to save money, food, and time — all incredibly valuable factors in a farmer’s life. We’re fortunate to have worked with Duke Farms to remove these items and give these bicycles a new home. We’d like to thank Duke Farms for their donations and their interest in our cause. The conservation grounds are a must- see for anyone looking to spend a relaxing afternoon soaking in the sun and all that our great Garden State has to offer.

Vermont

On May 6th, Pedals for Progress continued supporting our overseas partners by recycling 100 Trek bicycles from Vermont Bicycle Shop in Barre, Vermont. The bicycle shop unfortunately experienced an incredible loss of inventory and property damage due to intense flooding on July 11th, 2023, now known as one of “the great floods of Vermont.” The area was ravaged by the intense flooding, showcasing the dangers of climate change with increasingly frequent “ten-year” storms.

Thankfully, the bicycles were submerged in water for only a short time and incurred minimal damage. The bicycles, still in near-perfect condition, were deemed a liability by VT Bicycle Shop’s insurance and could not be sold as discounted items. Instead of scrapping the 100 Trek bicycles, Darren, the owner of the bicycle shop, contacted our Vermont satellite group to see if they were interested in the bikes.

Making their own name throughout Vermont from 25 years of collections, the Green Mountain Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (GMRPCV) answered the call to action immediately. Joanne and the GMRPCV group contacted me to discuss how to proceed with the unexpected donation. Transportation and funding were immediate hurdles as the VT group was still months away from their main collection event in September.

Our annual shipment of bicycles from our Vermont collection group to our headquarters in New Jersey is made possible by a once-a-year donation from FedEx, which delivers the items collected throughout the year, ending with their final collection and loading event in September. Darren needed the bicycles removed from his building to complete repairs to his shop damaged in the flood. With our Vermont group primarily based in Burlington, there were no resources available for storage, nor funding for a storage container until their September collection event.

After discussing several solutions, we decided it was best for P4P to transport the 100 bikes from Vermont. With our rental truck ready for our collection season, we treated the pickup like any other of our normal collections, just a few hundred miles outside our typical circuit. With a “collection” date set a few weeks after the initial request, there was still the question of how to process the bikes for shipment and where the funding would come from. Both elements can slow a project, but they are key factors for a P4P collection to succeed.

The GMRPCV group was nothing short of fantastic, rounding up volunteers from Burlington, Barre, other parts of VT, and even one volunteer found through Reddit! The fundraising side was also a success as Joanne and her network of supporters raised $2,000 to offset shipping costs.

On May 6th, I left early in the morning and arrived around noon with an empty truck. With the team’s help, we processed all 100 bikes and loaded the truck in just under three hours. It was an incredibly productive afternoon as we powered through the heat processing the bicycles. Joanne went around marking most of the bikes with bright orange tape to mark the occasion and give us a way to track the bikes at the start of their journey.

Personally, it was a very special afternoon, seeing the passion and tenacity everyone had while processing the items. It felt like any one of our collections, getting our hands dirty, talking with volunteers, and getting a good workout loading bikes. The atmosphere was incredibly positive as we were all excited to be part of giving these high-quality bikes a second life. It is not often we get an allotment of nearly brand-new bicycles of this caliber, and it is a pleasure to send them to our partners overseas, where they will go to well-deserving people looking for a better shot at life.

The following day, I brought the bicycles back to New Jersey, where they are warehoused and eagerly waiting for shipment. Since this does not happen often, I am slowly distributing the 100 VT Treks among the next few shipments to spread these items around the world as evenly as possible.

Moments like this are truly special and worth sharing with our supporters. There are so many behind-the-scenes people involved in our organization who make what we do possible. Grassroots efforts like this show the passion and enthusiasm in our country, spreading across the globe. I can’t thank Darren and Vermont Bicycle Shop enough for their selflessness, immediately thinking of others and knowing that these bikes were extremely useful, doing everything to prevent them from being scrapped at the insurance company’s request. I’d also like to thank Joanne and the wonderful team with the GMRPCV, who constantly rise to the call for action at a moment’s notice.

bicycles, Peace Corps, Sewing Partners

Twenty-Five Years of Collections in Vermont

By Alan Schultz
Fall 2023 Newsletter

Twenty-five years ago, a young boy infatuated with mountain biking was reading Dirt Rag magazine and saw an article about how mountain bikes could help health care workers access remote villages in the developing world, enabling them to help more patients quickly and efficiently. His mother had lived in South Africa as a child and traveled to El Salvador throughout her life. He saw a common ground and showed her the piece. Joanne, the mother in question, sat with the thought for a year and found Pedals for Progress and reached out at just the right time.

As fate would have it, Dorsey Hogg, who had served in the Peace Corps in Botswana, had also reached out to Pedals for Progress after hearing about the organization through the Long Island Returned Peace Corps Volunteers. Dorsey wanted to take a shot at running a collection. The problem was the three hundred miles between Vermont and P4P-HQ in New Jersey.

Dave Schweidenback ended up introducing Joanne and Dorsey to each other and the two Vermonters decided to join forces and take on the crazy idea of running a collection in their home state. A bit skeptical, only just finding his stride with his new non-profit, Dave was on board only if the new team would take responsibility for getting the bicycles down to New Jersey.

The two seasoned travelers view time and distance differently than most people and saw this obstacle as a mere speedbump. Through friends, family, significant others, and neighbors they assembled a small team with the common bond of spending time outside of the United States and a desire to continue to help those less fortunate. Some of the first to join included, Matt, who had also served in Botswana, Bob and Paula in Kenya, and Paul in rural Chile; the team tackled the distance between VT and NJ with ease.

First VT collection at Burlington High School, September 1999. Left to right first row: Bob Thompson, Brian Thompson, Matt Hogg, Dorsey Hogg, Unknown, Joanne Headlamp, Paul Demers. Back row: Stephan Demers.

The group came together as the Green Mountain Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (GMRPCV) and held their first collection in 1999 at Burlington High School. The team collected a staggering 138 bikes for their very first collection! With a 26-foot U-Haul rented and ready to go, Matt drove the bicycles to New Jersey with Dorsey following in her car to give him a ride back to Vermont.

Satisfied with their efforts and a job well done, the team decided to do it again! The second year they collected 83 bikes, with Dorsey and Matt making the trip. Year three, after another 114 bikes, Paul took a shot at driving the truck down and then took a train back up to Vermont. Lightning striking three times in a row, they knew they were onto something grand, but the long drives became expensive and tiresome.

During year four, partnering with the Williston/Essex Rotary Club, the distance between VT and NJ suddenly closed. The Rotary Club had a member who handled shipping for IBM. Diligently working her magic, she found someone at FedEx to agree to ship containers at no cost on a space-available basis. The local FedEx office in Vermont has been stalwart in their support ever since, through numerous changes in branch managers and leadership. Just over twenty years later, it has developed into a tradition that has lifted the burden of logistics, while helping hundreds of people every year along the way.

Inside Mary’s barn where refurbish machines are stored during the year

With this key factor in place that offered sustainability to the project, the GMRPCV in Vermont steadily picked up the pace and grew its collection efforts year after year. They have built partnerships with local bike shops participating in bike swaps, held auxiliary collections in smaller areas to maximize their collection efforts, recruited local recycling agencies that provide important financial support, local rotary clubs, student groups, and solid waste groups that all pitch in when they can. The core team has also donated their own time and efforts to fundraising, refurbishing machines, and getting the word out about their collections and our cause through televised news appearances. It goes without saying that the list of volunteers and time spent in 25 years of collections is LONG.

VT team September, 2023

We at Pedals for Progress simply want to say thank you. Thank you to Dorsey, Joanne, and the rest of the team in Vermont that have been helping with our mission for twenty-five years. Knocking it out of the park again, for their 25th Anniversary with P4P, they collected 225 bikes and 127 sewing machines on September 23rd! With this achievement, over the twenty five years of collections, they have collected a staggering 4,900 bikes and 1150 sewing machines that have been shipped around the world. From larger cities like Tirana, Albania, to small villages in rural Togo, these items have drastically changed the lives of thousands of individuals that now have the freedom and mobility to have fair shot at life.

There are hundreds of stories to be told about the team in Vermont. Without fail, there are always a couple interesting stories that come out of each collection. Take for example this small time-capsule that was donated to them this year.

This Singer Featherweight was donated by an unknown individual at this year’s collection. The VT team checks each sewing machine and assesses its condition to help us identify machines that may need to be serviced once they get to New Jersey. Inside this inconspicuous black box there was this note.

Thank you for giving my mother’s sewing machine a new home. She served in the Woman’s Army Corp during WWII, returning home to find herself a single parent with child — me. She went on through the GI Bill to receive a master’s degree in library science in Pittsburgh and returned to Ohio to live with my grandfather and grandmother and older sister. There she oversaw the renewal of the attic into an apartment for us. She worked at the public library and made clothes for me. As time passed and her brother, his wife and three children moved in the house with us and she continued to sew — clothes for me, doll clothes for my cousins as well as costumes for our little play/performances and Halloween! This sewing machine stitched together many wonderful memories and I hope you are able to put it to good use.

We will be doing exactly that, putting this machine to good use by sending it to a partner program abroad. While this story of a sentimental machine that represents a lifetime of stories is specific to one person, the overall sentiment is still a very real theme today. We’ve reported on a multitude of women in situations like this. Whether to people displaced by war, bearing a child alone, or supporting a house full of family members, we aim to provide machines to create change. Machines like this small Singer can provide a financial bedrock through a business endeavor or simply brighten the day of a child wanting a costume. No matter what is being made, our aim is that the result is one of progress and peace.

bicycles, Collectors, Peace Corps, Sewing Partners

report from vermont, fall 2021

By Alan Schultz
Fall 2021 Newsletter

GMRPCVs' 4000th bike“Freedom and Unity” is the motto of the great State of Vermont. Much of what we do at Pedals for Progress is based on this exact principle. Our goal is to send used bicycles and sewing machines to motivated people in the developing world in the hopes that they can have the freedom to get to where they need to be, creating a better life for themselves. This goal requires a great amount of unity here in the United States. We cannot do what we do without the help from hundreds of dedicated people throughout the country. The Green Mountain Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (GMRPCVs) of Vermont are some of our most productive domestic partners. Every year for 22 years they’ve sent bikes and sewing machines from 300 miles away.

FedEx, another generous domestic partner, ships the bikes at no charge from Vermont to our warehouse in New Jersey. In 2020, FedEx delivered the 4000th bike from Vermont.

The GMRPCV operation, led by Joanne Heidkamp, Paul Demers, and Bob Thompson, along with the rest of the volunteers, requires a great deal of hard work and dedication. We are happy to report that, this year alone, the members of the Green Mountain Returned Peace Corps Volunteers collected 312 bikes and 204 sewing machines from hundreds of Vermonters throughout the state. They held collections on Friday 9/24 in Montpelier and on Saturday 9/25 in Burlington. We here at Pedals for Progress would like to share a little bit about what they have done over the years and give thanks to the many people and groups involved with this difficult endeavor.

Getting the word out about our collections is always the biggest hurdle when organizing an event. What makes a successful collection is not simply stating that there will be a bike collection, but communicating to the public exactly what the collection is for. The GMRPCVs have been able to nail it year after year. MyNBC5, the local NBC station, ran a fantastic news piece that does exactly that. It perfectly showcases what they aim to do and where the bikes will be going and the lasting impact the bikes will have on the communities they are being sent to. Press releases like this not only spread the word, but convey infectious motivation that encourages people to come out to the collections. Here is the two-minute video from MyNBC5.

Vermont’s collections are particularly impressive because of the large number of sewing machines collected. Most of the machines are collected by Mary O’Brien, who works in the solid waste management department of Windsor County. She collects machines all year round, cleans, oils, and tests them. She uses pretty cloth, sometimes handkerchiefs or napkins, to hold sewing notions, a pin cushion, and reading glasses, and puts it all together in a kit for each machine. She also includes user manuals for the machines. The machines and their accessories must be astonishing to our overseas partners who get them.

This year, Mary also donated her classic, dearly loved road bike, which she had owned for most of her life and which she rode across the US in 1981. The bike has a personality of its own, reflecting the life-long activist and humanitarian that rode it. The bike is equipped with red panniers and an “anti-nuke bicyclist” sticker. The well-loved bike that has seen a lifetime adventure will continue its journey in its new home in Guatemala. It will double its life as a bicycle and see even more of the world while providing someone with a valuable means of transportation.

It is truly inspiring to see the great work that The Green Mountain Returned Peace Corps Volunteers have done for Pedals for Progress and the countless people and families associated with our international partners. We would again like to thank everyone involved. This year’s collection was certainly one worth celebrating. We greatly look forward to continuing this fantastic relationship and we are filled with excitement for next year’s collection.

bicycles, Peace Corps, South Africa

Corporate Largess and the Cape-to-Cape Trek

By Dave Schweidenback
Fall 2020 Newsletter

Back in the 1990s Pedals for Progress had a relationship with Bell Sports, at the time the largest distributor of bikes and bike parts in the United States and Canada. Bell Sports donated millions of dollars of new bicycle parts, including the bicycle that David Loveland rode from South Cape, South Africa, to North Cape, Norway.

Take a moment and think of yourself as the executive running a massive parts distribution company. How do you know you sold every single part you could have sold? The answer is there must be one left over. If you sell every one of an individual part, how do you know you couldn’t have sold more? Therefore it behooves these distributors to have a small amount of excess to prove their efficiency. The problem is that the excess needs to disappear.

Before the Bell–P4P relationship, that excess product would be ground up and put in a landfill at great expense. By donating all of that product to Pedals for Progress, Bell got a tax deduction for the value of the product they gave us. The trick was that the product had to be destroyed.

In this case, destruction means permanent removal from their market. The Bell Sports corporate footprint was the United States and Canada. If the donated products were removed from the United States and Canada, they were theoretically “destroyed”.

Over an eight year period, Pedals for Progress received over $10 million of new parts from Bell Sports.

In 1993 I received an email from David Loveland. He was approaching his close of service as a Peace Corps volunteer serving in Malawi, East Africa. He had a dream of bicycling from South Cape, South Africa, to North Cape, Norway. He was going to fund the trip himself. He just needed a bike. On one hand, this is not what Pedals for Progress does, but on the other hand there was a man with a dream and maybe I could help. I contacted my contact at Bell Sports, Jim Keller, and told him about this young man who wanted to bicycle halfway across the world, south to north. After some mild negotiating, Bell Sports gave us a brand-new Trek bicycle and some accessories, which we got to Malawi. Dave did the rest.

I remember conspiring with his mother to try to convince him to stay safe in the routes he took.

I also remember the story of the danger of frogs on the road in Slovakia. These great big frogs sit out on the road and if you hit one you just slide off the road into the bushes.

I recently heard from David. He still has the bicycle. I had a Cape-to-Cape T-shirt in a frame at the office and I sent it to him. He wrote a great trip report for this newsletter.

bicycles, Peace Corps, South Africa

cape to cape: 12,000 miles in 365 days on a bike

By David Loveland
Fall 2020 Newsletter

Cape to Cape routeAs I began reflecting on the completion, 25 years ago, of my bicycle journey from Cape Town, South Africa, to the North Cape of Norway, I felt the urge to reach out to those who helped me. The very first of those people was David Schweidenback, as he was the first person to not only help me but to believe that I could pull off this journey. I need to go back to 1992 to explain.

In July of that year, I arrived in Malawi as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Malawi is a small (less than 20 million people), landlocked, impoverished (perennially ranking in the bottom 5 in the world in terms of GDP) country in southeastern Africa. I was sent as a math teacher and was stationed in Namitambo, a remote village, with no running water or electricity, 5 miles from the nearest 2-lane, albeit dirt, road. In addition to teaching high school math, commerce, and world history to classes of 200+ students, I took on projects building teacher houses (one being my own) and installing wells to provide safe drinking water to the local villages.

Dave with his students and neighbors

In such a remote setting, transportation, as my Malawian friends would say, was a problem. While there was a market in my village on Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, where I could buy fresh tomatoes, cabbage, onions, and leafy vegetables as well as choose which part I wanted of the cow or goat slaughtered in front of me, nearly all other supplies could be bought only in the city of Blantyre, nearly 25 miles away. The typical routine for getting from Namitambo to Blantyre consisted of walking the 5 miles of foot paths and dirt tracks to the main road to wait for a bus, van, or other vehicle. Always crowded with people, diaperless babies, chickens, and the occasional goat, the buses and vans would slowly bounce their way along the rough road, stopping for passengers until not a single inch of space remained. From the door of my house to the bus station in Blantyre was, on average, a 2-hour ordeal. And the return trip was far worse, as I would have to carry whatever I bought the 5 miles home from the bus stop.

Not surprisingly, I was overjoyed when Peace Corps gave me a new mountain bike. It was cheap, with fragile components, but immediately became my primary mode of transportation. I could leave my house on the bicycle and be in Blantyre in a couple of  hours. I attached a basket to the rear rack, made myself toe clips out of strips of old inner tubes, and became an expert at maintaining and repairing the temperamental machine.

One day, as I was riding home from a shopping trip to Blantyre, I entered that area of the road where pedestrian traffic far outnumbers vehicles. Bicycle bells constantly rang out to clear pedestrians from the middle of the road. I had no bell, so I relied on my voice, politely saying “zikomo” (literally “thank you” but also used to say “excuse me”) to warn walkers of my approach.

On this particular day, I was riding along, daydreaming of where I would like to travel when my two-year service ended. I approached an elderly Malawian man and called out my “zikomo” warning. This old man, dressed in his formal brown suit, turned his head slowly to see who was coming. His eyes popped open in disbelief when he saw me. He quickly regained his composure and his friendly, open face lit up the road with a smile.

“Ah, aaaaahhhh!” he exclaimed.

“Moni, abambo,” (hello, father) I said. “Muli bwanji?” (How are you?).

“Ah, aaaaahhhh!” he exhaled again. “I am fine. And how are you?”

“I am also fine, father”

“You speak Chichewa very well, my son,” he said, continuing in his native tongue.

“No. No. Only a little bit, father,” I replied.

He motioned for me to stop and we spoke for a few minutes. That short conversation changed the course of my life. It was nothing that either one of us said that convinced me that bicycling was the way for me to travel. It was the fact that we were having this conversation at all. It was because I was riding a bicycle and not driving a car or motorcycle that I met this wonderful old man.

“Yendani bwino,” (travel well) he said as I rode away.

Never before had those words, heard so often, meant so much to me.

Moving the pedals was now effortless. I was thrilled to be who I was, where I was. Everything around me took on a new light. The din of a scratchy record blaring out of a run-down bottle store mingled with the drunken sounds of friendship inside was beautiful, life-affirming music. The children waved to me with their hands, their smiles, and their shining eyes.

I decided then and there that the bicycle was the mode of transportation for me. When I finished my two years of Peace Corps service, I would get a bicycle and ride somewhere. Looking at my world map made choosing the somewhere easy. I was in southern Africa. I would start at the bottom of Africa and head north. I wanted to see the Middle East and Eastern Europe, so the top of Europe was also a logical choice. Besides, I am an engineer turned math teacher. From the bottom of one continent to the top of another made simple, symmetrical sense.

Toasting the start of the trip in South Africa
South Africa, toasting the start of the trip

I wrote over a hundred letters from my little house in Namitambo, looking for sponsorship and support, and Dave Schweidenback was one of the few who answered. There were times when I thought he was more excited about my trip than I was, and his enthusiasm helped sustain my own. He worked tirelessly to help me in any way he could and was able to get me sponsorship where I failed. He convinced Bell Sports to donate a Trek bicycle and he provided bags, tools, and accessories for me to use. His many contacts provided me with support, comfort, and friendship along my route, as well.

On the equator in Kenya
The equator in Kenya

I left Cape Town, South Africa, on August 1, 1994. The route took me up the eastern side of Africa through Lesotho, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Eritrea. As I had hoped, being on the bicycle exposed me to friendly people, wild animals, amazing food, and warm hospitality. The sights, sounds, and smells of everyday African life permeated and became part of my own.

With the Sudan/Egypt border closed, I took a ferry from Eritrea, across the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia. There, I was required to take a bus out of the country as they kind of frowned on blond foreigners cycling alone through their kingdom and I wasn’t too keen on the prospect of endless sand for hundreds of miles, myself.

North into the Chalbi Desert, Kenya
North into the Chalbi Desert, Kenya

I was back in the saddle again from the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt, through Jordan (and the amazing Petra), and Israel. While it was peaceful and safe at the time, Syria was off limits to anyone coming from Israel, so I flew across the Mediterranean to southern Turkey, where I completed the Asian leg of my journey in Istanbul.

Arctic Circle, Finland
Arctic Circle, Finland

Crossing the Bosphorus into Europe, I headed north through Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland, taking advantage of Peace Corps headquarters and volunteers along the way. Cruising through Lithuania, Latvia (where they only gave me a 48-hour visa), and Estonia brought me to the Baltic. Another ferry took me across to Finland where I started my final stretch to Norway, pushing myself to complete what I had started so long ago. I cycled all night, taking advantage of the 24-hours of daylight above the arctic circle in July, to reach the North Cape on the 365th day of my journey, July 31, 1995, logging over 150 miles in those 24 hours, and putting the finishing touches on nearly 12,000 miles in total.

North Cape, Norway: end of the ride
North Cape, Norway. Done!

Thanks in large part to David Schweidenback and Pedals for Progress, that year changed my life forever. I have continued to cycle, riding the same bike around Iceland and the length of Viet Nam, as well as to work nearly every day while working in Malaysia, Brazil, and here in the U.S. Most importantly, my belief in humanity, in the kindness, warmth, and compassion of everyday people, no matter their race, religion, or nationality, was forever cast in stone.

More photos

Collectors, Peace Corps

Report from Vermont, Fall 2019

Fall 2019 Newsletter

On 21 September 2019 the Vermont Green Mountain Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (GMRPCV) held their annual collection. Vermont Knights of Columbus groups also held a September collection. The combined shipment from Vermont contained 139 bikes and 95 sewing machines, including the 500th sewing machine from the GMRPCVs. Here are the reports.

Green Mountain Returned Peace Corps Volunteers

By Joanne Heidkamp

We packed a total of 245 items into 4 containers: 139 bikes and 95 sewing machines. We also shipped 25 new bike seats donated by Terry bicycles.

A highlight of the day was receiving our 500th sewing machine, a lovely Bernina donated by Lucy Beck, of Shelburne, Vermont.

We collected $1,795 in cash and checks. You’ll be receiving a separate check for $410 for Mary O’Brien’s 41 lovingly tended sewing machines. Several people did not donate items, but have emailed me asking about sending shipping money directly to P4P — including a woman who works for USAID in Albania! And I hope to get $150–$200 for the 7 sewing machine cabinets that I have listed on Craigslist. Individuals in the group absorbed several hundred dollars in costs, including pizza and snacks, postage for the reminder postcards, plywood, … We can confidently say P4P will have $10 per item in hand by Thanksgiving.

Quality of the bikes and sewing machines was great overall, with a few really nice, high value items.

Thanks to everyone for their help. Thank God it’s only once a year!

Knights of Columbus, District #1, Fairfax, Vermont

By Ed Nuttall

Ed Nuttall, Peter Fitzgerald, and Bob Thompson

On 7 September 2019 members of Knights of Columbus Council 10830 held a bicycle collection at Langelier’s Car Wash. Fairfax Council 10830 and Milton Council 10417 (Police and Fire Department contribution) collected fifty bikes. The bikes were stored in Pete Fitzgerald’s barn. We also collected 5 sewing machines.

The following Knights participated: Bob Thompson, Doug Lantagne, Peter Fitzgerald, Keith Billado, Skyler Billado, Greg Hartmann, and Ed Nuttall.

On 20 September, we loaded 53 bikes onto a trailer and delivered them to Burlington, where, along with the bikes and sewing machines collected by the Green Mountain Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, they were loaded onto a FedEx truck for delivery to the P4P/SP trailers in Glen Gardner, New Jersey.

bicycles, Collectors, Peace Corps, Sewing Partners

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?





bicycles, Collectors, InGear - The Newsletter of P4P, Peace Corps, Sewing Partners

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!



Peace Corps, Sewing Partners, St. Vincent

St. Vincent, January 2018: From Lemons You Make Lemonade

By David Schweidenback
Photos: Jim Lincoln


In 2010 P4P made a shipment of 20 sewing machines to the Barrouallie Secondary School in St. Vincent. On a January 2018 trip on the Island Windjammers sailing ship Diamant, I realized we would be spending one night in St. Vincent. Crew member Brown was from St. Vincent and was able to get in touch with the principal of the school and arrange for me to visit.

After we moored at Young Island, shipmate Jim Lincoln and I took a taxi to Barrouallie. It was only 12 miles as the crow flies but it was 17 miles to drive down into and up out of Kingston and up and over and around steep ridges of mountains with almost no flatland anywhere. The road was barely wide enough for two cars: there was a cliff on one side and a wall of rock on the other. No place you would ever want to ride a bicycle.

We arrived at the school and were greeted by the new principal, Mr. Kenneth Holder, and the math teacher Mr. Raffique Durham. They greeted Jim and me very warmly but after I introduced myself they started explaining the real needs they had for the school. They were especially in need of math books, rulers and other measuring instruments, and graph paper. Unfortunately, these are things that Pedals for Progress does not provide.


I asked if they remembered Peace Corps volunteer Liz Deppe, who worked with P4P to get the original shipment of sewing machines. But both the principal and the math teacher were relatively new to the school. The principal called in Mrs. Hildred Anderson, who is the head secretary of the school and has been there since forever. I have always been convinced that secretaries should rule the world, or maybe they already do!

Mrs. Anderson did indeed remember the Peace Corps volunteer and knew exactly where the sewing machines were: sitting in a storage closet. She brought me down to show me the machines, which were sitting there in amazingly good shape, most of them operational. She said she is the only person who ever uses them—sometimes she comes in on weekends to do her sewing.

On leaving, I suggested to principal Holder that, if he asked, he could probably get a new Peace Corps volunteer to teach sewing and fashion design. I’m afraid the meeting did not go well for him because he did not get the funding he was hoping for.

The sewing machines were shipped to help the people of this small, hard-working but poor community. I have since written to the principal with a suggestion that I think is a win for everyone. My suggestion is that the school sell the sewing machines to interested people in the community, and then use the income from those sales to buy the supplies the math department needs. The community would have more people earning a little more income because of the sewing machines. And the school would have the funding it desperately needs. This is Plan B. Plan A was to have the school teach young adults to sew, but the new principal is not now interested in this sort of vocational education. Plan B will work, though, and it’s a lot better to get the machines into the community and fund the school rather than let 20 good sewing machines sit in a storage closet forever.