volunteers needed

[bill london <london@moscow.com>]

Volunteers Needed for Bikes Bound for Africa

The Village Bicycle Project, a four-year old grassroots technology
project based in Moscow that sends used bicycles from the Pacific
Northwest to Africa, invites volunteers to prepare bicycles for shipment
during an all-day drop-in workshop on Saturday, February 9, announced
Dave Peckham, project coordinator.

The workshop will be at 913 South Jefferson at Moscow, beginning at 8am.
At the workshop, donated bicycles will be packed for shipment to Seattle
where they will be loaded into a cargo container for the voyage to
Africa.  Additional bicycles collected in Seattle will also be loaded in
the container, which holds between 350 and 400 bikes.

In addition, the project needs donations of adult-sized mountain bikes.
There is room in the shipping container for about 75 more bikes, Peckham
said.

The Village Bicycle Project (VBP) will send its 1000th bicycle to Ghana
this month.  This is the third year that the Moscow-based charity has
sent bikes to Africa where they are highly valued for transportation in
a place where most people cannot afford cars.

>From Seattle the bikes travel by sea to Ghana, where VBP partners will
sell the majority of them to cover shipping costs of more than $5000.
About 100 bikes will be set aside for projects to benefit targeted
groups.  Those bicycles are provided at discounted price to people who
participate in a free repair training workshop.

Peckham explained that at the African workshops, people are very
enthusiastic about the workshops, they have lots of fun and they learn a
lot about taking care of their bikes.  More than 200 people have
received bikes through VBP workshops in Ghana during the last two
years.  The project has provided workshops to farm groups, teachers in
isolated schools, youth groups, remote villages, an HIV/AIDS awareness
organization, and a naturopathic healing center.

“The project serves a number of goals,” Peckham said.  “One, we are
addressing the huge wealth gap between America and the poor majority of
the world’s people, where something that America throws away is
benefiting others.  Secondly, we’re helping improve access to a form of
transportation more in-line with what most Ghanaians find affordable.
And then, of course there’s the environmental advantages of people
moving about on bikes rather than in motor vehicles.”

“We are also trying to pay attention to that over-worked term
‘Sustainability,’ and what that really means to us.  It’s about enduring
benefit in Ghana after VBP is gone.  We are working with local business
and learning about raising their technology with better tools, improving
supply lines, local and international networks, and bottom-line
economics.”

“Then there’s the grass-roots work, teaching some basic bike
maintenance, then subsidizing the purchase price, working with what I
call the productive poor, people who will benefit themselves in such a
way with their bikes, that it trickles around to the greater community.
For example, a farmer gets a bike, and is able to transport more produce
to more diverse markets, raising the food supply, and her/his income,
which will be spent mostly in the community.”

The project, which began in 1999, is administered by the
Palouse-Clearwater Environmental Institute.

For more information, contact VBP at 892-2681 or at ghanabikes@yahoo.com