World Bicycle Relief

Recently I was lucky enough to see a talk about the work of World Bicycle Relief (WBR) as part of their UK tour to spread the word about the power of bicycles. Steve visited Bristol, along with a real life Buffalo Bike (I couldn't resist a photo op!), and talked us through the origins of WBR, stories from people who have received a bike and how public donations are also used to train mechanics to keep the bikes running. Even though I felt a knew a fair bit already about the charity, after all I’m fundraising for them, it really struck home just how valuable their work is and it made me more convinced than ever that it’s a brilliant charity to support.

It was interesting to learn that they grew out of the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004, providing bikes to people in Sri Lanka to help them with the very obvious transport issues following the devastating natural disaster. The project moved on from Sri Lanka, which was a short term issue, and expanded into Sub-Saharan Africa where they have operated in 19 different countries since 2005.

What was new to me was their approach to getting their bicycles out there, which involves not just supplying bikes through their WBR programme, but also selling bikes to not-for-profits, business and individuals who can afford to buy them. It’s a really good sustainable business model that has had a huge impact on their distribution. Around 157,000 bikes have been sold and 180,000 funded through donations - those of you who don’t need a calculator will have worked out that’s a massive 337,000 bikes in total.

Numbers are all well and good, but they are only a small part of story and don’t really tell the human side of how bikes are empowering people. I’ll chuck another fact at you though: around 70% of all bikes that are distributed go to girls, which is a really important factor in helping to address some of the serious gender inequality that’s encountered in many rural African communities. It especially increases opportunities for education, but it also provide a means of security which I had never considered before. There are stories of female students who walk to school and get preyed upon by sugar cane cutters, or just men offering rides to school on their motorbikes and the prospect of sexual harassment and possible rape in these situations is pretty high. The film below touches on some of that, as well as gender inequalities. It's definitely worth six minutes of your time.

There are plenty more areas of impact that WBR covers and I don't want to go into any more here, but if you are interested you can read their 2016 impact report here, which also goes into detail about the positive impacts they have on economic development, healthcare and education.

Most importantly you can help their cause by donating and you can do that by clicking here! A bike costs just £95 and I'd like to raise enough for 20 by the time I've cycled to Montpellier, so every little helps - plus if I hit my target there'll be a comedy leg waxing video for you to enjoy. After all, all serious cyclists have shaved legs, don't they?