Hey everyone,
I write to you bearing great news. Last year in 2011 we were able to get 322 kids on bikes through our Youth Earn-a-Bike and Youth Bike Give-a-Way programs. We thought we really really cool. I wanted to top that this year and I wasn’t sure if that was going to happen…
WELL WE TOTALLY DID IT!!!
You see, this week we passed 400 in our count of bikes going out to youth. The best part is that we still have a month to go. Youth Earn-a-Bike has slowed down some being that it is getting colder out and more youth are interested in staying inside than coming to our shop to build a bike. But the chosen few still are coming into the shop every Saturday and building up their next bike.
We are also partnering with the United Way who has hooked us up with 8 different Family Development Centers around the area. We will be building bicycles up for each of these centers to be given to children ages 7 and under (who are too young for Earn-a-Bike). Also, like every year we have a handful of bikes built for our great landlord and community partner, the Cass Corridor Neighborhood Development Corporation.
So while we have passed the 400 mark, we will have at least 80 more bikes to build up and get to these centers. Hopefully we can do that before the year ends.
Part of why we have been able to pull this great feat off is our volunteers and our donors. On Nov. 28th we had just 5 volunteers build up 20 bikes in one night. And those bikes wouldn’t have been there to build had it not been for all the folks donating bikes to us.
In fact, we’ve had so many bikes donated to us, we are running out of space in our warehouse. You may call us hoarders, but this is the problem we need. We are at high tide in the winter, but come next spring the number of bikes going out through our youth programs will increase. So having a build up right now is only going to help us next year. Heather and myself have been working hard keeping that warehouse usable and planning for next year to make it even more successful than this year.
So to close this entry out, I invite ya’ll to participate in any of our upcoming fundraising events. Because with a larger number of bikes donated, we want to get these bikes under kids and we can only do that by having our doors opened for more hours every week. Unfortunately keeping those doors open and staffed by quality employees takes money, there is no way around that one. So here is how ya’ll can help us out:
1) Check out our Dinner and Movies night coming up.
2) Pledge to our January Bike-a-Thon
3) Buy a 2013 Back Alley Bikes Calendar (available at The Hub retail shop)
4) Pick up a super sweet Back Alley Bikes T-shirt
5) Take advantage of the selection in the cold season and buy a bicycle at The Hub of Detroit retail shop.
So here’s to breaking the 500 bicycle mark next year in 2013. I know we can do it. All it takes is hard work. We’re up to it.
– jason x