Holiday Bike Drive will reach out to diverse communities

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.

Another focus of this year’s event, says Hill Graves, was to get “whole families” on bikes. “The theory is that it increases overall use of the bike if the entire family can ride together.”

Suffice it to say, the event this year will be packed with families that hail from all corners of the globe. Hill Graves says 17 languages will be spoken at the event including; Russian, Vietnamese, Somali, May May, Oromo, Congolese, Ukrainian, and many more. Of those languages, the CCC will provide volunteer interpreters for five of them (including our news intern Adams Carroll, who will assist 25 Russian families during the event!).

There are 525 kids registered to receive a free bike at the event. In addition to a new ride, kids will take a riding skills class and be outfitted with a helmet. The CCC has 262 volunteers scheduled to lend a hand this weekend and they worked with 47 different local agencies to register the kids.

This is truly an amazing event and certainly fits the “It takes a community” bill perfectly.

More info on this event at CommunityCyclingCenter.org.