[Vision2020] report from Village Bicycle Project

[bill london]

Below is a report of a local non-profit organization (the Village 
Bicycle Project) that is having a big impact. The project ships used 
bikes to Africa and arranges training sessions for Africans to learn 
bike repair. BL

>
>Village Bicycle Project Annual Report 2003
> From Dave Peckham, Director
> 2003 has been a boom and bust year for the Village
>Bicycle Project.  Bike shipments to Ghana more than
>doubled, totaling 2,500 bikes this year.  We held
>twice as many workshops as ever before, with more than
>235 people receiving discounted bikes and repair
>training.   We’re starting a new Earn-a-Bike program
>with school kids very soon.  The tools program
>continues, with progress as well as obstacles. 
>However, a funding shortage threatens to shut down all
>programs except for the bikes shipments, which is
>self-sufficient.
> We’re now getting bikes from community bicycle groups
>in Seattle, Boston, New York and Essex England, who
>all together sent six containers this year.  
>Following is our bike collecting partners and their
>totals for this year:
> Bikes Not Bombs, Boston, 986 bikes.  
>Bike Works, Seattle, 939, including almost 300
>collected from our home base neighborhood around
>Moscow, Idaho, and Pullman and Spokane, Washington.
>Re-Cycle, of Essex, England, 361. Re-Cycle a Bicycle,
>New York, 350.  
> Our partners in Ghana, George Aidoo and Samson Ayine
>sell most of the bikes to cover shipping costs.  I
>learned on my visit this summer that most of their
>buyers are young men and teenagers, who buy just a few
>bikes, and then fix them for resale.  I was delighted
>to learn that our bikes are providing an honest income
>for more than 20 young men.
> There also appears to be a growing number of bikes in
>use throughout the areas I visited and I saw that bike
>prices have fallen in the capital Accra by about 20%
>over the last two years.  This is certainly due to an
>increase in the supply of bikes, as prices for just
>about everything else is rising because of inflation. 
>VBP is proud to be a part in the improved availability
>and lower prices of bikes in Ghana.  
> The word is out in southeast Ghana about our
>workshops, where you can get a bike for half-price
>after attending a one-day workshop on maintenance and
>repair.  We had more than 25 requests for workshops,
>mostly from that part of the country.  We only had
>funding for eight, yet have done twelve already this
>year.  The workshops mostly help the productive poor,
>those who will be able to use the bikes to improve
>their livelihoods:  people like Gloria Osei, of Liati
>Wote, who bought a bike at a workshop in her village
>last year.  Her bicycle helps to reduce transportation
>costs for taking her produce to sell at markets in
>neighboring villages.  The workshop she said, “helped
>me a lot to learn how to take care of my bicycle.”
> In December we’ll be starting our long awaited
>Earn-a-Bike programs with school children and others. 
>Modeled after similar programs throughout North
>America, Emily Lin, a volunteer formerly with Bikes
>Not Bombs, will be starting up six-week programs in
>several villages, where the graduating students will
>receive free bikes.  Emily raised the money for the
>project herself, helped by a major grant from the
>Jordanna Foundation.
> In July we took delivery on $1000 in tools from
>Taiwan, but problems with shipping and customs more
>than doubled the cost.  George and Samson were too
>busy with bikes to manage tool sales, so I packed my
>panniers full and rode to the bike market.  It is a
>teeming place near the center of the city, with rows
>of bikes and piles of parts, hordes of people passing
>by, and my friends, the bikes and parts sellers.  This
>is where I first met George and Samson four years ago,
>and everyone knows me and knows that I know where the
>tools are.  For two years I’d left G and S to sell
>tools to this aggressive crowd, and word spread
>quickly that on this day I was selling, and that I was
>giving my old friends a special break.  I was nearly
>mobbed, and had to control the crowd.  Everyone wanted
>to see everything, and tools went around for
>observation.  I noticed that two pedal wrenches went
>missing, and had to put everything away and stop all
>sales until the tools returned.  After about ten
>minutes they did.   
> Over several days I sold over 200 pieces, at about
>half of cost, (inflated by customs overcharges).  One
>parts seller named Cico, with partners in Nigeria
>(eight times the size of Ghana) took an interest in
>buying in bulk.  I had done a little business with him
>two years before, and he had been difficult.  He
>offered an apology, saying “Now I know how to work
>with you.”  With this comment I was struck by how much
>it means that I keep returning to Ghana.  Cico ended
>up with more than 300 tools, and VBP now has gotten
>better bike tools into Nigeria
> The response I got in the market speaks volumes about
>what these tools that I introduced here four years ago
>have come to mean to these guys and their work.  
>Kwame, a seller of used parts said of the freewheel
>remover, “Before I would suffer a lot to remove a
>free[wheel], and often it would spoil, but now it
>comes off with ease.”  Repairs that they were hesitant
>to attempt, because pounding out parts often broke
>them, can now be made with confidence and economy.  
> If these tools become popular in Nigeria, we may be
>able to order larger volumes and get better prices. 
>First, we have to solve the problems with customs.  
>No, first we have to solve the funding problems!
> Tools subsidies have cost VBP over $2000 the last two
>years, an expense I think is necessary for the
>introduction of the tools, and a very appropriate kind
>of gift for the wealthy people of the world to give
>the impoverished and struggling.  Tools to fix
>bicycles validate a humble occupation, improves
>skills, and plays an important part in making bikes
>more economically available to the general public.   
> Our workshops cost about $280 each.  They are a
>wonderful grassroots effort to get bikes directly into
>the hands of rural residents, who use them to help
>make ends meet.  Globalization is taking a terrible
>toll on subsistence farmers in Africa, millions of
>whom are undercut by cheap imported food.   The
>problem is, if they can’t afford to farm, what will
>they do?  There are no jobs in the cities.  With
>improved mobility, less time is spent walking to farms
>and markets, and more time can be spent working and
>growing food, and this helps locally grown food
>compete with imports.  We held 12 workshops already
>this year, and have one more scheduled.  Without
>additional funding support, we cannot continue the
>workshops.
>So, I hate to beg, but if you’d like to see our tools
>and workshops programs continue, please donate.  (This
>is not about salary for the Director, I’m a
>volunteer.)   To look at our budget and project totals
>use this link:
>  <http://www.pcei.org/vbp/budget03.htm>
> Here’s what your donations will do.
> $6     subsidies a set of four of the tools most
>popular with the mechanics
>$10   subsidizes a bike for one of our workshop
>recipients
>$20   buys a tool kit for the village
>$13   pays for additional tools we give to village
>bike mechanics who attend our workshops
>$280 pays for a workshop; a one-day repair training
>for 20 people, who buy subsidized bikes for
>half-price.  You can donate a workshop to a targeted
>community, like we did this year in Elmina and
>Kopeyia.   
>Send your tax-deductible donations to 
>Village Bicycle Project
>c/o PCEI
>Box 8596
>Moscow, ID 83843
>Thanks to all for your support in the past and to your
>continued support for our efforts to help improve life
>for the disadvantaged people of Africa with
>economical, appropriate, and environmentally friendly
>transportation, including the following: 
>Jordanna Foundation, Gordon and Mary Braun, the Waritz
>family, Tri-State Distributors, Paradise Creek
>Bicycles, Dishman Dodge in Spokane, Pedal Pals of
>Spokane, Inland Northwest Peace Corps Association,
>Mike Driscoll, Delores Schwindt, Douglas Hawley, the
>Donart Family, Ina,  Kiwanis Club of Moscow, Dean and
>Gretchen Stewart, Gary Queener, Chris LaPaglia, Mare
>Rosenthal, Greg Brown, David Vollmer, Ariana
>Dickinson, Dean Pittenger, Julia Piaskowsky, Palouse
>Legal Access, Bryan Burke, Wheatley School in Old
>Westbury New York, Steve Finkelstein, George and
>Kathleen Weir, Leroy Lee, Lizandra Vidal, Mary Forker,
>Annie Lefebvre, Kellin Gellming, Brad Neuman, Gerry
>Sokolik, Penny Floyd and Charles R. Lahin, Brenda and
>Ray von Wandruska,  Sally and Robert Vorhies, Tom and
>JoAnn Trail, Janet Le Compte, Sean, Jon Lamoreux,
>Julia, Julie, Harry Moore, Dusty, Kathy Dickerson,
>Merry Farrington, Kelly Moore, Recycle-a-Bicycle, 
>Bikes Not Bombs
> 
>Best wishes for the New Year,
>Dave 
>
>
>
>=====
>Village Bicycle Project on the web:  www.ibike.org/vbp
>For reports of the project (less  than one per month), send a message to: ghanabikes@yahoo.com,  with
> `subscribe vbp' in the message line.
>
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