Waiting for new owners.
(Photos: Britt Appleton/CCC)

The Community Cycling Center held their 16th annual Holiday Bike Drive yesterday. The event connected over 400 kids from low-income families with a newly refurbished bike, a helmet, basic safety education and most importantly, the freedom and sheer joy that comes with having your own two wheels.

We weren't at the event this year, but the CCC shared a few photos of the happy kids (taken by Britt Appleton): (more...)

Thanks to the Community Cycling Center, this vacant lot in the New Columbia mixed-income housing neighborhood will soon be home to a bike skills park, pump track and repair center!
(Photo © J. Maus)

(more...)

Bench at NE Prescott and 68th.
(Photo © J. Maus)

The Community Cycling Center is taking their "I ride" campaign to new places. The non-profit that sees bicycles as "vehicles for social change" announced today they have purchased bus bench advertisements at 15 locations in north and northeast Portland.

I spotted one of the ads yesterday on NE Prescott Street, right across the street from Harvey Scott School. (more...)

Just in case this week's employment opportunities quietly slipped past while you nodded off at the control tower of your current job...WAKE UP! Here they come again featuring shiny new bikes, born again bikes and bikes that need your love. Best of luck!

• Bike Builder -- Bike Gallery
• Used Inventory Coordinator -- Community Cycling Center
• Bike Mechanic -- Bike Gallery

For a complete list of available jobs, click here. If you'd like more information about the BikePortland Job Listings, contact us, or visit the Job Listings page.

You can sign up for all the latest job listings via RSS, email, or by following us on Twitter.

[Publisher's note: Please join me in welcoming our new News Intern Patrick Croasdaile. We're excited that he has joined our team. This is his first article for BikePortland.]

A grant will help the Community
Cycling Center continue and expand
their work in communities like Hacienda.
(Photos: CCC)

The northeast Portland based non profit Community Cycling Center has received a grant from the Bullitt Foundation for $25,000. The grant will be used to strengthen CCC’s ties to their community partners and continue their work in under-served neighborhoods.

The focus of the grant funds will be the creation of a new collaborative advocacy program called Communities in Motion. This program seeks to build on past successes working with the City of Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT), community leaders from New Columbia and the Hacienda Community Development Corporation. Collaborative advocacy as a means of preventing problems and growing sustainable communities is a hallmark of the Bullitt Foundation’s granting process. (more...)

Do you remember?

Portland filmmaker Chad Berkley is making a film about the Community Cycling Center's awesome annual event, the Holiday Bike Drive. Remember Your First Bike? is slated for completion next spring but Berkley has already put together a trailer for the film and has just launched a Kickstarter page to help raise some funds to finish it up.

In the film, Berkley takes a behind the scenes look at how the magical 500 bike giveaway happens and interviews CCC volunteers and staffers for their perspectives. Berkley also includes interviews with notable Portlanders including Mayor Sam Adams and others. (more...)

Alison Hill Graves at a presentation
held in the Portland Building on
Thursday.
(Photo © J. Maus)

It's been over a year since the Community Cycling Center embarked on an effort to better understand why Portland's bike riding masses lack racial diversity.

In a story published here back in October, CCC executive director Alison Hill Graves said, "The people riding and making decisions about bicycles is a white, middle class group."
(more...)

There are always lots of
smiles at the Holiday Bike Drive.
(Photos © J. Maus)

This weekend is the Community Cycling Center's annual Holiday Bike Drive. This year the theme is "It takes a community" and it will be the most diverse group of participants the CCC has ever served.

According to the CCC's Director of Community and Programs Alison Hill Graves, they targeted outreach for the event at the same organizations they have met through their Understanding Barriers to Bicycling project. Those organizations include New Columbia, the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization, Self Enhancement, Inc., and others.
(more...)

The staff at Community Cycling Center, a 15 year old Portland-based nonprofit that aims to increase access to bicycling, has been doing some soul searching in the last few years.

In the process, community and programs director Alison Hill Graves says they started looking around the area they serve (a five-mile radius around their NE 17th and Alberta retail shop). "We saw a big divide in terms of who's riding bikes and who isn't."
(more...)

One of a series of posters
created for the campaign.
(Photos by Kim Oanh Nguyen)

Seeking to reshape the image that comes to mind when people think of "the bike community" or "bicyclists", the Northeast Portland-based Community Cycling Center has launched their "I Ride" awareness campaign.

So far, the campaign consists of a series of promotional posters and an upcoming video that asks a variety of Portlanders to finish the sentence "I ride _____."

According to CCC Director of Community and Programs Alison Hill Graves, the idea for the campaign was hatched last summer. In an email interview about the project, Graves said when they would bring up the terms "bicyclists" or "bicycle community" in meetings or at their retail shop and classes, the response caught their attention. (more...)

Seeing the neighborhood at biking speed.
- More images/Slideshow below-
(Photos © J. Maus)

Last Friday I spent the day with the Community Cycling Center's "Coasters" summer bike camp.

The camp is for kids 6-8 years old and the idea is to teach them how to ride on city streets, do basic bike maintenance (very basic), build confidence, show them around the neighborhood, and of course to just have fun.

My daughter is finally old enough to join so I went along with her on the final day of the week-long camp. After gathering at the CCC on Alberta and 17th, we rolled east via N. Going Ave. The street is slated to be a major bike boulevard and it's easy to see why. It's plenty wide, already has low traffic, and its just one block south of Alberta. Even biking with 13 kids, several of whom were fresh from the sidewalk and the watchful eyes of parents, was stress-free. (more...)

The CCC's retail location on
NE Alberta.
(Photo © J. Maus)

The northeast Portland-based Community Cycling Center has won a grant for a project to help them "understand cultural and economic barriers to bicycling."

According to a statement from the CCC, the project will help them perform a needs assessment to better understand the "unique cultural and economic barriers to bicycling encountered by minority and low-income community members."

The nearly $80,000 grant from Metro also comes with the expertise of Kristin Lensen, a consultant with Alta Planning + Design and Portland State University's Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation. (more...)

The CCC's retail shop at
NE Alberta and 17th.
(Photo © J. Maus)

The Bikes Belong Foundation has awarded the Northeast Portland based Community Cycling Center (CCC) a $10,000 grant.

The grant has been made through Bikes Belong's Paul David Clark Best Practices Grants program. That program -- which was established in honor of avid cyclist Paul Clark who was killed by a vehicle while riding his bike in 2005 -- makes awards to "exemplary organizations that are supporting their communities through bicycling, establishing innovative bike programs for young riders, and setting—and raising—the bicycle-advocacy bar." (more...)

366 lucky kids will get to
choose their favorite this weekend.
(Photo © J. Maus)

With a press release that exclaims, "The Portland "Snowpocalypse" can't keep us from getting kids on bikes!", the Community Cycling Center (CCC) has announced plans to hold a sequel to their annual Holiday Bike Drive this weekend.

The event will hope to bring biking's goodness to more than 350 kids who couldn't attend the original Bike Drive on December 14th, which was cut short by a snow storm. The CCC promises it will be "the same great event, just a little over a month later." (more...)

The Community Cycling Center's annual Holiday Bike Drive was all set for another successful day of making bike dreams come true for over 500 low-income Portland-area kids...but that was before the big storm hit.

As the weather worsened on the day of the event (last Sunday), staffers decided to cut it short, leaving about 350 kids without new bikes.

Now, the CCC is gearing up for a Holiday Bike Drive sequel for January. An announcement on their website states, "We will spend the next few weeks organizing volunteers and staff, coordinating with social service agencies and families, and fundraising like crazy to pull the whole thing off."

The sequel event is expected to cost about $3,000 in staff time and supplies to pull off.

To learn more and to send a donation, visit the support page at CommunityCyclingCenter.org.

There were still plenty of smiles
at the Holiday Bike Drive yesterday.
(Photo by Chad Berkley)

As we reported yesterday, the Community Cycling Center's Holiday Bike Drive suffered a bit due to extreme weather conditions that kept many families away.

The event is their largest of the year and volunteers had readied well over 500 bikes to give to low-income kids. CCC communications director Alison Hill-Graves sent us an email with the following recap:

"We had a smaller, yet still incredible event despite that pesky storm. We had kids coming in until 3:30 and we still had staff and volunteers around to help. We ended up loading up about 400 bikes and getting them back up to North Portland where we keep them. We plan some kind of alternative event in January."

(more...)

[UPDATE, 10:50am: Event organizers say due to harsh weather, the event is being cut short. They will finish helping families that are already there, and anyone on the way, but doors will close shortly.]

Bikes await kids at last year's
Holiday Bike Drive.(Photo © J. Maus)

With an Arctic blast of snow and wind hitting Portland this morning, and with images of closed roads and stranded cars streaming on the local TV news, the Community Cycling Center is grappling with what the weather might mean for their Holiday Bike Drive.

Over 500 bikes and hundreds of volunteers are all ready to go at Legacy Emanuel Hospital in North Portland this morning. However, Community Cycling Center communications director Alison Hill-Graves says a few families have already called to say they're staying home. (more...)

From the Holiday Bike Drive
in 2006.
- Slideshow below -
(Photo © J. Maus)

The Northeast Portland-based Community Cycling Center and their army of bike elves are all set to continue their 13-year Holiday Bike Drive tradition this weekend.

The event will provide refurbished bikes, new helmets, and basic safety education (delivered with fun) to well over 500 kids from low-income families in the region.

The bikes -- which will be lined up for kids to choose on their own -- have been donated throughout the year from more than 15 collection events. How long does it take to get all those bikes ready? The CCC says it took 1,000 volunteers over 3,000 hours to clean and repair them all.
(more...)

Just got this from the Bike Gallery:

Local Bike Retailer Gets Into the Spirit of Giving

Portland, Oregon – November 28, 2008. This December, one local bike retailer is shifting their holiday focus to help support an important holiday tradition – the 13th annual Community Cycling Center Holiday Bike Drive. November 28, 2008, through January 2, 2009, family-owned Bike Gallery is actively encouraging their customers to make a donation to local non-profit Community Cycling Center. During that time, Bike Gallery is inviting its customers to become a star on their Giving Tree by donating $5 or more to the Community Cycling Center (CCC). Anyone making a donation of $5 or more will receive a star to personalize with their name or a message. That star will go on a Giving Tree that is centrally located in the store. Your donation helps offset the costs of Holiday Bike Drive and other CCC programs. AND…for every star on the tree, Bike Gallery will donate $5 to the CCC!
(more...)

The CCC, known for their work
with kids, will seek to broaden
their impact into underserved
parts of the city.
(Photo © J. Maus)

The Community Cycling Center plans to launch a new project in 2009 that will seek to broaden the scope of their mission into ethnically diverse and low-income communities in North and Northeast Portland.

According to the CCC's Director of Community and Programs Alison Hill Graves, the new project will start in early spring of next year and will seek to build "cultural competence" by partnering with other community organizations who view bicycles as "a viable option for their community." (more...)