World Bicycle Relief achieves half a million donated bicycles

The World Bicycle Relief has donated its 500,000th bicycle to a rural community in western Kenya.

Photo: Ondari Ogega

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The World Bicycle Relief continues to changes lives with the bicycle, as it just donated its 500,000th Buffalo Bike to communities in developing nations. Heavily invested in areas of medicine, education and farming in Africa, Asia and Latin America the World Bicycle Relief donates their sturdy utilitarian bikes to students and healthcare worker to facilitate their studies or medical or agricultural deliveries.

As part of a 102-bike delivery to Bar Union Secondary School in Kakamega County near Kisumu, Western Kenya, the 500,000th bike marks a significant milestone in World Bicycle Relief’s history as it aims to transform everyday lives. And it has played a played a key role in education development as students can travel to school faster and more safely with their new bicycles.

Photo: World Bicycle Relief

The program was launched in 2005 by Trek and SRAM, with both organizations raising funds to build durable bicycles to be used by communities across Africa. Since its inception in 2005, the charity has harnessed the power of bicycles to enable students to get to school more easily and safely, help health workers visit more patients in a day, or farmers to deliver heavy produce to market before it spoils.

The World Bank estimates that more than one billion people living in rural areas around the world lack access to good roads and transportation, including 70 percent of Africa’s rural population. And to facilitate transportation in such remote areas World Bicycle Relief’s Buffalo Bike has proven itself to be be a key player, as it offers recipients a rugged long-lasting bicycle to target communities. In addition, The Buffalo Bikes create jobs as they are locally assembled and the World Bicycle Relief has trained more than 2,300 local bicycle mechanic to assure long-term maintenance, and hence, long-term impact.

As part of World Bicycle Relief’s education program, students and their parents enter a “study-to-own” agreement, confirming that the bicycle will be used primarily to travel to school. As a key element of the agreement, the students will own the bicycle when they successfully graduate from school.

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