I’m doing it. I’m keeping this website updated each week with something new. I’ve gotten a bunch of help from James who produces the “Bikes of the Now” each week so you know what sweet ride you can come buy in our shop to help support our programming. With your help in purchasing power, we’ve sold over 140 bikes this year. I think that is a record so far. Don’t quote me on that, but I think that is up there. Thank you for shopping at the Hub to help us continue our community programming.
So yeah, lets talk about those community programs. Through our programs for youth we have already gotten almost 80 bikes out the door under children. This number is smaller than the sales in our retail shop, but this may change soon and here is why:
- We are about to expand youth programming. Instead of once a week, we will have kids upstairs working our shop four days a week. During our mid week sessions I will be working with groups of youth from different organizations to increase our capacity.
- We are about to do a youth bike give-a-way. This time around it looks like we are going to get about 60 bikes out to youth under the age of 8. Through partnerships with different schools and non-profits the number of bikes we are getting to youth will certainly jump next month.
- 80 is already more than we had gotten out at this time last year. Last year at this time we were at about 60 bicycles out under youth. Our program increase definitely has to do with donors and volunteers helping us out, so thank you so much. As I sit here getting ready for school to get out for the summer and have increased responsibility with more programming, I’m glad to have so much support behind me to make what we do here at the Hub get so much better.
- Through fund raising, we can pay someone like me to do more outreach. I have been fortunate to work with groups like City Year, Americorps and Vistas Nuevas Head Start to visit many different schools, health fairs and community events around the city. Other groups such as Detroit Bike City have helped us in similar ways getting us tabling space at events so we can let more folks know what we do.
Besides that number of bikes out under youth we are also getting these kids helpful mechanic skills. We don’t currently have a way to track all the kids that bring their own bikes into our shop and learn how to fix them. Being that I’m seeing around 20 kids each Saturday and have to turn some away because of a full shop, the number of youth we reach is very large.
Speaking of those mechanic skills, we have other programs and learning opportunities that have expanded. We have been able to offer Friday night Adult Mechanic Classes in addition to our Sunday afternoon class which has been a large success. This allows us to share more mechanical knowledge with adults than we were previously in our packed Sunday sessions.
Besides mechanic skills we are also teaching youth safe riding skills. Through our grant from the DALMAC Fund, we have been able to offer Youth based rides every Saturday all summer long. So these meet at the shop at 3pm every week and will go until September 1st when we have our big Safe Streets Youth Ride.
Finally I’m excited that at the beginning of next week I get to call four high school youth and let them know they will be working with us this summer. These four will be working, learning and teaching as part of our Mechanic-in-Training program. I think we have a bunch of great applications this year. Around 20 youth applied but we only have room for four. With this kind of response, I don’t worry much about the future of cycling in Detroit. Our youth already have it covered. So keep an eye on the website next week when I announce who will be working with us.
So thanks for reading and keeping up with us. This is a big time for us when a lot of things need to happen and we get busy. We want to keep you engaged in the action. When you are busy, updating a website can be hard to keep up with, but I won’t let that happen here at The Hub. Keep plugged in with us and let us know what updates you want to hear about.
Talk to you soon,
– jason x
PS – To check out, I also updated some parts of our website: “Our Story” has been updated to get you up to 2012 with some more history and photos added. I also updated our links to add our landlord CCNDC and Detroit Summer, the organization we were born from. If you haven’t already, check out the different food vendors we’ve linked to as well that helped us out during our Progressive Dinner by Bicycle Rides.