Bicycle Safety Education

Dear Friends,

Thanks to you, the Silicon Valley Bicycle Exchange can continue to offer bicycle safety instruction in tandem with its donations of refurbished bicycles. We have been repairing and donating used bicycles for over 21 years now, and several years ago, thanks to a generous grant from Google's Home Sweet Home program, we were able to hire instructors to teach safety classes at the events were the bicycles are distributed; unfortunately, the Home Sweet Home program was discontinued in 2014, which is why we were so pleased to be invited to list our project with GlobalGiving. 

The Silicon Valley Bicycle Exchange is a member of the League of American Bicyclists and the instructors that it hires are certified by that organization and have received extensive training for conducting instruction in both on-road and classroom settings. The classes that are taught concentrate on our youth recipients as we seek to instill safe and effecting cycling habits early on. Your donations to our safety education program are also used to purchase safety equipment such as helmets, lights and reflectors.

The safety classes are organized in cooperation with the partner organizations that distribute our bikes. We learned early on that in order to effectively reach the members in our community who are most in need, we needed to work with social service organizations who understand and work with these clients on a regular basis. Most often, our partner organizations to not have the resources to hire instructors to provide safety instruction to their clients. Your donation goes a long way because our partner organizations provide in-kind support in the form of staff time to schedule, organize and support the safety classes on site at their events.

Each organization that distributes our bikes is unique; but one organization, Sunday Friends in San Jose, CA serves as an example of what the program is like for the client who receives a bicycle. The photograph we have included shows kids lining up for their instructor on their bikes on the blacktop at Lowell Elementary School. Weeks before this point though, the youth began working toward this day by earning tickets to "buy" their bicycles by doing giving back to the community in the following ways:

• Families start and end each program by cleaning the grounds of the school that hosts our programs. On warm days, children wash the playground equipment and benches.
• In every program, children create craft gifts for people who have different disadvantages in life than they do. They give to residents of senior centers, children in hospitals, overseas communities, injured veterans and disabled individuals.
• Children collaborate with volunteers to prepare and serve nutritious food to everyone in the program.
• Parents and children write and illustrate hundreds of personal thank you letters to Sunday Friends’ supporters each program.
• In these ways and many more, all participants help each other to bring out their best and learn.

You can learn more about a day at Sunday Friends here.

We are pleased to convey that as of the end of Q1 of 2015, we have received enough support to schedule our first safety class this year with Sunday Friends. It will be held on June 14 (a Sunday!). We have many more distributions planned throughout the year (about 24 distributions and approximately 600 bikes in total) so we are hopeful that with continuing support we will be able to schedule additional safety classes as well.

Links:

• Bicycle Exchange Home Page