We’re busy, but ready to roll!
It’s bike season, finally
So we wanted to take a blog post to share what we are working on, and it’s a lot. We aim to reach our vision – of every youth having agency to go places by bicycle – in a holistic way. Our work touches all the barriers youth must overcome to choose biking – but we focus on skills, access and community.
So, here’s a rundown of what we are doing in each area. People see the odd social media post or reel and they might wonder how all the things we do are connected. This post answers that question.
Learning to pedal
Our school programs start in earnest this week. We have typical and adaptive programs at 10 schools in May. We’ll reach 4 classes and an average of 40 students per class for 1,600 students! Our bike units take students though 4 or five days of learning, from basic balance, to turns, to signals and traffic safety. The goal is always a short community ride. For many students, this is the first time they’ve considered how a bike could improve their transportation options.
Our adaptive programs are also hugely impactful. We are able to get pretty much every student riding. Our goal is always to get kids that have the ability to ride a two wheeled bike. Even with the school strike in the fall, we expect to reach over 750 special needs kids in this school year.
Access to bikes
As we meet kids and get them excited about cycling, the next step is to provide a bike. Bike ownership levels for Calgary teens is abysmal. At some schools, only 25% of kids have a bike – and often what they have isn’t appropriate/ (too small, not working.)
After our classes, we offer kids the chance to get a good used bike, helmet lock and tool kit. This gives them freedom. We’ve upcycled and re-homed over 1000 bikes in the last year. Each and every day, refurbished bikes go to the community out of our Bike Hub. We also started a Free Kids Bike Trade Up to hopefully keep kids in wheels as they grow to teen years so they can continue to bike places in junior high and high school. It’s simple, sustainable and free. It just makes sense.
The Bike Hub, a unique partnership between a small business and our charity, provides youth (and everyone else) access to a good, low cost way to repair bikes. Membership is just $20 per year. A bike is only transportation if its working. www.yycbikehub.ca
We’re also partnering with YYCBike Swap on an event at the Bike Hub on May 9th. This is about making it easier to buy or sell a used bike without any hassle. It’s key that e-bikes are included because so many people are considering e-bikes for transportation because they make riding so easy and fun!
Building bike communities everywhere
Once youth have the skills and a reliable bike, they often still need a bit more of a push to try biking places. That’s where community comes in. If you have friends who bike, or you can meet others on wheels, the likely hood of kids biking places increases. That’s where our twice annual ABC challenge week and CycleFest come in.
These events are designed to help youth connect with others. We always tell kids they’ll never meet a friend in the backseat of a parent’s car. But they will meet others – at stop lights, on a pathway, or at the bike racks. They have an instant commonality – their bikes!
ABC Challenge is a school based event – and it was smaller this year because we couldn’t find funding. Our vision is to make it happen two times per year and to grown to include every school in the city.
CycleFest takes that community to the Downtown and the East Village to celebrate and connect the bike community on a larger scale.
Come learn, celebrate and have fun
Want to organize a bike bus to school? Learn to change a tire? Understand how to choose a cycling route in Calgary?
Cyclefest will do all of that and more. We have living statues on penny farthings. Jugglers on unicycles, a fun Cargo bike Relay race, adults racing on toddler bikes, street hockey and so much more. Plus beer gardens and food trucks. Prizes? Did we say that. We’ll have lots of them.
Sign up now to learn to bike, or for guided tours of the downtown Cycletracks.
And we have a team based fundraising event going on at the same time.
Cyclepalooza is fun, fundraising event
Our programs cost money. We don’t have a big reserve, we don’t get any municipal funding for our programs, and we only get a small, $25,000 grant from the province as a local sports organization. We need to find new and innovative ways to support our work. And that’s where CyclePalooza comes in.
Six events – bike poker, slow roll, change a tire race, baby bike race, traffic safety trivia and pedal power – will take place over the last week of May and at Cyclefest. We’re engaging school teams and corporate or family teams to help us raise funds for our work. Think of big cycling rides to raise funds for cancer, but its small, easy, for everyone and your butt won’t hurt for days.
Sign up your team here.
