Completed bikes ready to be delivered
Saturday we took our church youth downtown to Reliant Stadium and joined 4600 other volunteers to build bikes for needy children. There is an organization that raises money to donate 20,000 bikes each year (yes I said each year) to children in low-income neighborhoods in and around Houston. Those 20,000 bicycles come in 37-50 lbs boxes....and in lots of pieces :)
My SIL Britt and I volunteered to work the "box pit". We spend most of the day in the wearhouse part of the operation loading boxes of bikes on carts and wheeling to the building teams on the floor. It took some convincing that us two women could lift 40+ pounds, but we let out Iowa work ethic shine. These two farm girls still have some bailing skills, we loaded over 800 bikes each in about two hours. There were about 6 of us loading and we would load up to 60 bike on a cart in a few minutes and wheel them out. We would barely get out of the gate and you would step away as people mobbed the cart to get another bike. I think everyone had a great time, except my back, who keeps telling me that I'm not 18 anymore :)
Wonder how they deliver the bikes? They bring in 100+ semis. The semis each take a neighborhood, they open the back doors and hand the bikes out as they drive down the street. There is more to the project than just giving out bikes, they have been tracking the socio-economic stats of these neighborhoods over the past five years. They are finding that gang violence is down, employment is up, and parents are more involved in their kids school because not only do the youth have transportation, the adults also use the bikes to get to work and school.
Have a Merry Christmas!
Completed bikes ready to be delivered
Saturday we took our church youth downtown to Reliant Stadium and joined 4600 other volunteers to build bikes for needy children. There is an organization that raises money to donate 20,000 bikes each year (yes I said each year) to children in low-income neighborhoods in and around Houston. Those 20,000 bicycles come in 37-50 lbs boxes....and in lots of pieces :)
My SIL Britt and I volunteered to work the "box pit". We spend most of the day in the wearhouse part of the operation loading boxes of bikes on carts and wheeling to the building teams on the floor. It took some convincing that us two women could lift 40+ pounds, but we let out Iowa work ethic shine. These two farm girls still have some bailing skills, we loaded over 800 bikes each in about two hours. There were about 6 of us loading and we would load up to 60 bike on a cart in a few minutes and wheel them out. We would barely get out of the gate and you would step away as people mobbed the cart to get another bike. I think everyone had a great time, except my back, who keeps telling me that I'm not 18 anymore :)
Wonder how they deliver the bikes? They bring in 100+ semis. The semis each take a neighborhood, they open the back doors and hand the bikes out as they drive down the street. There is more to the project than just giving out bikes, they have been tracking the socio-economic stats of these neighborhoods over the past five years. They are finding that gang violence is down, employment is up, and parents are more involved in their kids school because not only do the youth have transportation, the adults also use the bikes to get to work and school.
Have a Merry Christmas!
3 comments:
Wow, that is really interesting; especially the part about how the bikes affect the neighborhoods. What a neat program!
Really, really neat program.
How did you find out about this? Very cool that you heard about it and then actually decided to volunteer. You are a good Samaritan.
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