Bikes for Guelph Refugees Pilot Initiative
What: Providing bicycles to refugee families.
Who: A collaboration with Guelph Coalition for Active Transportation (GCAT) and community partners.
Why: Biking supports independence by facilitating active travel, empowers capacity for exercise and improvements to physical and mental health, supports social inclusion, and is just plain fun!
When: The goal is to provide bicycles to approximately 12 families and approximately 65 bicycles total, distribution between April-June of 2019.
Options of how you can help:
1) Donations:
- Bicycles: If you have any bicycles to donate, please contact e-mail below. We can come to you to pick up the bicycles. Drop off option location TBD.
- Monetary: We welcome monetary donations, these will go to purchase of bicycles as needed, and other accessories (e.g. locks, lights).
- Bike Accessories: If you have any accessories, helmets (new in box), lights, locks, rear racks, etc…
Current Inventory request: Bikes (28 Adult, 12 Teen, 22 Youth), 34 U-Locks, Helmets (28 Adult, 12 Teen, 22 Youth), 62 Bells, 40 rear lights, 30 front lights.
2) Volunteer:
- Fixing Bikes: We want to make sure the bikes are safe and road ready before distribution and will utilize community bike co-op and need volunteers to help.
- Bike Mentors: We plan to support the refugees learning how to ride if needed, and being safe on the road. The Bike Mentors would be trained and use a team approach for supporting the families t learn how to ride safe.
For more information or if you want to help, contact: GCAT – activeguelph@gmail.com and Alex – aball416@gmail.com