THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WHEELS NOW
This week our beautiful focus is on wheels. For today, we took a fresh look at initiatives and programs that use wheels to help people in need. Whether they help with basic survival needs or to improve the quality of life for people who face dire challenges, the wheel, one of mankind’s earliest tools is being used to turn difficult situations around and make a positive impact.
Bikes are easy. They are one of the simplest transport technologies we have. They are easy to make, riding them is childsplay, they are easy to maintain, and they are affordable to many. In fact, they are so easy to come by for most people, that huge numbers of them get discarded. Every year, Americans, for example, buy 14 million new bicycles and discard 5 million old ones. Even more are left, abandoned and unused in basements, sheds and garages across the United States.
Photo: Courtesy of Bicycles Against Poverty
At first blush, the problem is a bit of a sorry situation, until you begin to understand that a simple bicycle can make a world of difference to poor people, particularly in developing third world countries:
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A healthcare worker can visit 3 to 4 times the number of clients or distribute 4 times the amount of medical supplies with a bicycle vs by walking.
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Girls are 70 percent more likely to attend school if their household owns a bicycle.
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Transportation time is cut by 66%. 5km on foot = 1 hour / 5km by bicycle = 20 minutes.
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A bicycle carries up to 5 times the load compared with a person walking.
Economic wheels start spinning when Bicycles For Humanity (B4H) comes to town. Bicycles mean business. The B4H Bicycle Empowerment Centre is a “bicycle shop-in-a-box.” Each BEC is a shipping container, stocked with 450-500 bicycles, tools, spare parts and comprehensive training material on bicycle maintenance, delivered to communities in need. It not only empowers people with transportation and gives them the means to maintain it, it gives them a money making venture. The shipping container is turned into a bike shop.
B4H added the Skills Empowerment Centre, outfitted with digital tablets, to further empower the people with education and the means to collect data to improve health care systems and business opportunities.
B4H, founded in 2005, originally set out to collect one container full of bikes (500) and deliver it to the people of Namibia. Now B4H is a global grassroots organization with chapters all over Canada, the U.S., Australia, the Netherlands and Mexico. Over 50,000 bikes have been delivered to the developing world.
Wheels of Change is a spinoff, co-founded in 2010, by Dan Austin (formerly of Bicycles for Humanity) and Michael Linke, (formerly of the Bicycle Empowerment Network). With similar programs, WOC collects donated bicycles and ships them to communities in Africa where they are used to start bike shops and other businesses. This organization aims to empower African communities with sustainable enterprise. WOC ensures that 100% of all profits from these bike-enabled businesses goes back into the communities. WOC has, to date, shipped over 10,000 bicycles to African communities in need.
Working Bikes, an organization based in Chicago, gives old bikes new homes to help both local and international communities in Latin America and Africa including, El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama, Uganda, Ghana, and many others. It has distributed over 38,000 bikes since it began in 2003.
Photo: Courtesy of Amazon
Read more about the impact bicycles have had on society, specifically for women, in “Wheels of Change: How Women Rode the Bicycle to Freedom (With a Few Flat Tires Along the Way)
Image: Courtesy of Hulton Archive/Getty Images
The book tells the stories through vintage photographs, advertisements, cartoons, and songs, in a scrapbook-like presentation. Men didn’t like ladies riding bikes, not so long ago. Their sometimes comical objections are shared here. Bikes had an influence on fashion, and impact on social change from early on. According to Susan B. Anthony, the bike "has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world."
Transforming, and sometimes saving lives, with simple, sometime second-hand bicycles is a very beautiful thing. Read more about how wheels are making the world more beautiful all this week on BeautifulNow. And enter this week’s BN Competition with photos and artwork focused on our current theme: “Beautiful Wheels.”
