555 Bikes Headed to Ghana and Village Bicycle Project
On Friday, October 27, Wheels for Winners, Free Bikes 4 Kidz, Dream Bikes and Working Bikes provided 555 bikes headed to Ghana. Over 8 exhausting hours, the bikes were painstakingly loaded into an empty container by experienced Working Bikes and Trek volunteers. The bikes chosen aren’t necessarily great for the Dane County riding environment, but are ideal for roads in Ghana.
Working Bikes in Chicago spearheaded this collaborative effort sending the bikes to the Village Bicycle Project in Ghana. These bicycles will provide time-saving transportation that significantly increases access to income, health and education. Working Bikes collects donated bikes from all over Chicago and the Midwest. Their mission is to strengthen local and global communities by giving donated bicycles new life and redistributing them as tools for self-determination. See Eben and the crew at Village Bicycle Project Ghana.
Wheels for Winners has been providing about 300 bikes annually to Working Bikes. Working Bikes typically brings a truck to Madison to collect 50-75 bikes at a time and take them back to Chicago for consolidation into a shipping container. Trevor Clarke, the executive director of Working Bikes, states, “We bring over 10,000 bicycles a year to our warehouse in Chicago, sending them out to folks who need transportation in our community and communities across the globe. We’re thrilled to be collaborating with our friends in Madison to, for the first time, send a container directly from Wisconsin to our partners abroad.” Working Bikes trains mechanics at the Village Bicycle Project in Ghana. The Village Bicycle Project fixes them, gives away about half and sells the other half to provide paychecks to their mechanics.
The Empty Container
Early arrivals for a day of bike preparation and very careful loading into the container.
Loading the Container
To get the maximum number of bikes into the container, the bike pedals and front wheel is taken off of every bike. Volunteers from Wheels for Winners, Free Bikes 4 Kidz, Dream Bikes and Working Bikes prep the bikes.
Prepping the Bikes
Jamie Campbell from Wheels for Winners taking pedals and front tires off bikes before they go into the container.
Packed and Almost Ready
Numerous old bike tubes are tied across the back of the container to help hold the bikes in place.
Working Bikes Loading Crew
Happy, satisfied and exhausted after a great 8 hours of painstaking work!
Wheels for Winners Volunteers
Alan Crossley, Jamie Campbell and Neil Lerner. (Not pictured- James Dunn, Jay Schad and Paul Kleemann.)
The Entire Volunteer Crew (Almost)
Not everyone could be there at the end of the day.
The Bike Tally, Row by Row
The goal was to load at least 500 bikes and the loading crew kept a tally, row by row. Final total = 555
The Container Heads Out
By 6:30 PM a semi-truck pulled out with the container headed for Chicago, then the port of Newark, NJ, and expected to reach Ghana by December 10th.