![]() With all the non-profit bike organizations in Chicago such as Working Bikes, West Town Bikes, the Recyclery, Bikes N’ Roses, and Blackstone Bicycle Works, is there room for another non-profit devoted to bikes? Free Bikes 4 Kidz, a national non-profit that focuses on collecting and donating bikes for kids, now has a Chicago chapter that promises to fill a void with their focus on bikes for kids. There are a lot of benefits when kids ride bikes. These include:
The original plan was to have a bike collection drive in early April. Over 30 locations were identified where people could drop off kid bikes. Then on one day, within a 4 hours period, 24 trucks were to be dispatched to each drop off location to collect the bikes and take them to a central warehouse, a 18,000 square foot location at Elston and Cortland where the bikes would be staged for 10 weeks. At the warehouse, bikes would cleaned and fixed by volunteers. Before a bike was ready for distribution it would go through a quality assurance process for safety. Once the bikes were ready, they would be distributed by two methods:
When the program resumes many volunteers will be needed. Key areas to get involved are:
Since Free Bikes 4 Kidz was put on hold due to Covid-19, it will need to start over again next year. There is an opportunity for individuals to participate in any of the key volunteer areas or as a group or corporate activity in a night at the warehouse. With our help we can make bikes available to kids who need them and have fun working with each other in the process. Comments are closed.
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