Village Bicycle Project – New Homes For Old Bikes
The Village Bicycle Project is a small non-government organization working primarily in Ghana, West Africa to increase access to bicycles and provide community workshops for participants to learn bike maintenance and mechanic skills.
In Africa where 1% of people have access to owning a vehicle, alternative modes of transport are not just an environmentally pleasing choice, but an absolute necessity for health, work and daily survival.
The average Ghanaian lives on less than two dollars a day, often weekly transportation costs account for half of people’s expenditure. Imagine if half of your weekly income was spent just getting to the store, to work, or to visit family. How much would a simple tool such as a bicycle save you on a daily or weekly basis? To be able to travel three times faster than on foot and negate, not only the expensive cost of public transport, but also avoid the unreliability of waiting for a car that could take hours to come or worse still, never arrive.
By providing quality affordable bicycles through workshops in rural areas Village Bicycle Project (VBP) is supporting an already growing local economy focusing on the bicycle as a reliable form of transportation.
Workshops, often organized by in country Peace Corps volunteers in collaboration with their local counterparts, provide a full day maintenance training class. Participants learn basic skills such as flat repair, chain cleaning, and other minor adjustments. They are then eligible to purchase a bicycle at half of the market price, encouraging people to invest in both the training class and their new bicycle. This money is then re-funneled back through the organization to offset the transportation costs of getting the bikes to Ghana.
The VBP is one of many non-profit organizations working internationally to distribute bicycles in the developing world. Just as many of these organizations the VBP sources bicycles from western cities and towns with an excess of used bicycles. A bicycle we consider unfit to ride or out of style others will overhaul through necessity and sheer ingenuity and ride for years to come.
To donate your old bicycle that’s been sitting idly in the garage, look up the bicycle recycling organization closest to you on the International Bicycle Fund’s web site
Tags: bicycle, bike, culture, donation, recycling, repurposing
Apr 16, 2008
good day. accept greeting from a sister at heart. i live in Camerron and intend to run a project like yours. i have been confirmed for donation by good-will bicycles in Australia. I am stucked at the level of financing the transportation. Mr. Mark Pete of goodwill bikes advised me to contact you if you could help in any way. i need this program as it has been my dream for years. even if it means taking a loan that i will do. my people arew suffering. the prize of fuel keeps climbong every day and the people get more and more fustrated every day. this is the reason for the eampant strikes in my country of late. the solution out of this hell is bikes to reduce the dependance on automuobile transport.
while waiting to hear from you, i remain
Rosemary Enjema Eko.
Apr 23, 2008
Hi. Please join the Bicycle to Work! LinkedIn networking group. Members pledge that they will try to ride their bicycle to work or on an errand at least once a week. Although the benefits should be obvious, let me outline them here.
Right now people in the industrialized world are facing two very grave problems: obesity and a growing scarcity of oil. Compounding this problem is the new food shortage brought about, in part, by the conversion of food cropland to bio-fuel crop production. Most people feel powerless to help, but there is one thing that we can do. Ride our bicycles to work.
If everyone would agree to ride their bikes to work one day per week we could cut oil consumption by as much as 10-15%. No one would argue that riding a bike burns more calories than driving the car. Although popular politically right now, most bio-fuels consume more energy than they produce. We would be much better to eat those bio-crops then use our own energy to transport us around.
So spread the word. Make it a movement! Bicycle to work one day a week and do your part to cut back obesity and the overuse of oil and precious cropland.
Just go to my profile at http://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreylstevenson and you can click on the group to be included. While you are there, don’t forget to ask to link to my network of more than 7,000,000 like-minded professionals. I accept all invitations and look forward to meeting you.
Jeff
May 05, 2008
Hello Rosemary,
I am sorry for not responding earlier. I think the best option for you would be to visit the Village Bicycle Project website at http://www.pcei.org/vbp and get in touch with them directly.
Another good website to search is the International Bicycle Fund (http://www.ibike.org/) they have several links to various organizations working throughout Africa that may be able to help you.
Good luck with your project.
Jaye