Give a Little – fundraiser for our Bike Rodeo trailer

We’re pretty pleased today to launch our bike trailer fundraiser via Give a Little.

We’ve got a unique opportunity (through some awesome supporters) to buy and kit-out a trailer for our kids bike library and skills course, but we need to raise $2750 before Christmas to make it happen!

So we’re asking you for an hour of your time. Not an actual hour, as we know December is a busy time, but what you’d earn in an hour. So far we’ve clocked up about 230 volunteer hours – through bike mechanics, people driving around picking up bikes, people dropping off bikes and all the admin side of stuff. If we could match the number of volunteer hours with  even half that number of ‘donated hours’ we reckon we’ll reach our goal.

Heard enough? Then head on over to our Give a Little page to make a huge difference for kids in Wellington.

So what’s this bike trailer about? The idea is to create a mobile ‘Bike Rodeo’. The trailer will hold 12-20 kids bikes of different sizes, a skills (or obstacle) course, and all the other important stuff, like comfy chairs for parents and sunblock for kids. We’ll take our bike trailer to every fair or festival that will have us! Along with some trained cycle skills instructors who can teach kids to ride, or help them conquer the obstacles (big or small, real or figurative).

We reckon (and the research backs us up) that learning to ride a bike has a huge number of benefits for kids. It builds fitness, confidence, resilience, curiosity, a sense of adventure and spatial awareness. And it’s fun! It’s a right of passage for every kiwi kid, but not every kiwi kid currently has access to a bike, so we want to fix that. If you’ve heard of the awesome Bikes in Schools projects, think of this as a mobile version which fills the gaps which Bikes in Schools hasn’t reached yet.

So please support our Bike Rodeo project – spread the word by sharing this page on Facebook, twitter, or whatever the latest social media thing is. Email your friends and mention it at your school gate. And if you can, please give us an hour!