The Power of a Bicycle; Hometown Pride

Somewhere in Uganda is my brother, balancing time spent with the 50 orphans at Hope Destitute Children's Center, teaching an English class at the local secondary school, and enjoying his first father's day with his new wife and child.

The weather is finally getting hot and sunny here, but in his latest e-mail to me he told me the weather has been nice there for the past three years. I remember all too well the perfectly hot, sunny days we spent with Dave on our visit two summers ago. I remember the children in the street running out to greet him and hold our hands as we walked. I remember the smiles on the faces of all of the orphans who call my brother Uncle Kimuli (chee-moo-lee).

And I remember the poverty.

It's hard not to feel the urge to help when you see how the people of Uganda live, and it was this feeling that remained in the back of our heads as we planned our year devoted to charity.

Oh, we came up with hundreds of overly elaborate plans of how we might be able to help, but we settled on the simplest, most dramatic way. A bicycle.

The same thing that may power you to work, may help you enjoy time with your family, or may be sitting in your basement, waiting silently for you to dust it off and take it for a ride

To most of us, a bike is a luxury. To a child in a developing country, a bike becomes powerful and it was World Bicycle Relief that helped us to realize the power of a bike. With Dave's help, we narrowed our search for a charitable organization who provided bikes to people in need to World Bicycle Relief. WBR sounded like it had covered all of it's bases. They supply durable, strong, simple bikes to be distributed and offer a maintenance training program to ensure a long life for the bicycles. They have WBR staff at the bicycle distribution and get updates on the bikes and their owners.

Most of the bikes go to one of two types of programs. They are given to health-care workers in order to help them access more patients. The bikes that our 50 State Tour will supply are for young girls and boys to help them continue their education. A child can cut a two hour walk to school down to thirty minutes by using a bike and carry up to five times the load. It will allow young girl to continue her education in an area where so many girls drop out due to their lack of time.

You can read about how a bicycle helped Priscah, a 13-year-old girl in Zambia, to continue her education here: http://www.worldbicyclerelief.org/blog/?p=1592. Priscah is a perfect example of how a bike can impact an entire family in a developing country.

Through World Bicycle Relief, the gift of a bike has helped to change over 80,000 lives in developing countries. For months now we have been emailing back and forth with different members of the World Bicycle Relief team. So it was a great treat to finally put faces with some of the names when we visited their headquarters in Chicago this past week. We knew they were a great organization before, but after meeting the people that make WBR work, we couldn't be more thrilled to be working with them this year.

From the very top, this organization is littered with passion and devotion. While in Chicago, we stayed with the co-founder of World Bicycle Relief and met many of the WBR team. Our main contact has been Katie, who stops at nothing to help us set up presentations and get us places to stay.

Though we still haven't met her, it was Katie who set up our Chicago stay. In her last email, Katie reminded us that through our fundraising efforts so far, we are close to providing an entire school with bicycles.

Knowing that we are close to impacting 100 students in a Zambian school made Adam and I so proud and we needed to share this figure with you, our Madison supporters.

So thank you for believing in us and following our Give a Bike: 50 State Tour. Madison wins Best Home Town Support Ever!

Christy and Adam are currently in Wisconsin. To find out more, check out their blog at http://giveabike.blogspot.com/ or their Facebook Page at https:/ /www.facebook.com/giveabike. To see where they are, you can check out this map at Track My Tour. Christy will be writing occasional stories for Patch as she and her husband make their way through the U.S.

Madison Patch is proud to be the Connecticut sponsor for Adam and Christy's trip. If you'd like to sponsor their trip, visit this page on their website.