Send your old bike to Africa (re-cycle) « Politics « Politics « Jonathan Spencer's Tales of Ordinary Wisdom

Send your old bike to Africa (re-cycle)

Published on September 17, 2005 at Politics

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Re-Cycle
Tel/ Fax 01206 382207 60 High Street, WEST MERSEA, Essex CO5 8JE
Email: info@re-cycle.org Website: www.re-cycle.org
Contact Merlin Matthews, founder/president

Charity ‘taking old bikes to new places’. Will receive, but cannot collect, unwanted bicycles (millions rust in garages), and ships them to five African countries. Requests donation towards shipping with each bike. Will also receive old tools and parts. Working also with Greenwich Cycling Campaign, who will receive bikes from July 2003. It sets up workshops with local partners to teach people how to repair and maintain bikes. In South Africa, Re-Cycle has set up a charity, Afribike, helping people save 1/4 of their income spent on transport. In poor countries a 4-hour, 10 mile daily walk is common just for survival – to fetch water, take goods to farm, factory or market, to get to school, or act as game warden. Bikes can make lives much easier, so people are trained to run workshops in local communities, teaching repair, maintenance and safe riding. Many ‘Cycleversity’ graduates are women, who become empowering role models for students. For a token fee people get a 2-day basic mechanics course so they can keep and look after the bike they refurbish, which then lasts for years. South Africa has 1,000 bike pilot projects in 10 provinces, and plans 60 workshops and 1,000,000 bikes over the next ten years! See www.afribike.org Re~Cycle and Afribike make the ‘extraBike’, a simplekit device that greatly increases a bike’s load capacity to carry more people (up to two adults and two children) or goods. This makes it into a labour saving, job-creating tool suitable for tasks like carrying food and
water, mobile vending and collecting recyclables. www.xtracycle.com gives details of a more expensive version for the UK.

In the UK, Re~Cycle reduces the number of bikes landfilled. By encouraging cycling, it cuts car pollution and congestion, and improves health. It generates income worldwide and provides environmental benefit by sellingorganic, fairly traded, recycled, reclaimed, rechargeable, long life, energy efficient, vegan, affordable items, and cheap, good quality, services including land and mobile phones, green electricity, gas and internet shopping. ‘Earn a bike’ scheme, with community and youth groups, churches, schools, councils and charities, provides a free bike to UK volunteers in return for 30 hours work for Re-Cycle. This gives them skills in cycle maintenance, administration, marketing, communication, time management, teamwork and relationships, as well as self-worth. It aims to set up eight UK collection points for bikes. Sources include Royal Mail (4500 a year), old stock donated by cycle shops and manufacturers, police and lost property. UK partnerships include Tools for Self Reliance (www.tfsr.org – see WasteBook section 85), experienced in shipping, and setting up workshops overseas; Riders for Health (www.riders.org.uk ); and councils.

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Jonathan has experience in both the nonprofit and business sectors, working in a consultative capacity and as a project manager with PCTs, charities, the arts, trade unions, businesses and individuals in the areas of Information, motivation, direction and communications development. He has helped organisations as diverse as carers charities and magazine publishers to develop strategy, policy and process to make a more efficient infrastructure. One where staff share in the gains of the organisation and the end user, whether client, patient or customer, receives the highest quality service possible. As well as being an expert in applied information technology and communication he is a qualified and experienced counsellor and motivator.