BIKES FOR THE WORLD REACHES NEW MILESTONE AND DONATES ITS 40,000TH BICYCLE TO HELP OTHERS OVERSEAS HELP THEMSELVES

On December 5, 2009, Bikes for the World, a DC area-based non-profit, shipped its 40,000th bike for donation to programs overseas that help people who need affordable transportation help themselves. The shipment containing this milestone bike went to the Panamanian Association of Goodwill Industries, a long-time Bikes for the World charity partner.

On the left, Bikes for the World Director, Keith Oberg, places the 40,000th donated bike in the container bound for Panama. The following weekend Bikes for the World loaded another container sent to Uganda which brought the total bikes donated in 2009 to over 9,000!

The bikes donated by Bikes for the World are sold by local partners, such as PAGI at low prices. These bikes not only provide local workers, tradesmen, and students with affordable transport but enable the receiving organization to train and employ people with disabilities, building job skills and providing employment to a population often marginalized in the job market.

In a short time span of five years, the mid-Atlantic network of Bikes for the World has quietly become the largest program of its type in the United States. During that period, the organization has mobilized more than 150 faith communities, schools, scout troops, civic clubs, and businesses and has collected and donated nearly 40,000 bikes valued at more than $1.5 million. It has also developed a reputation for shipping high-quality used bicycles to reputable non-profit partners in Africa and the Caribbean Basin.

Please check out Bikes for the World online, and if the spirit moves you, help them help improve the lives of others by donating your old bicycle, sponsoring a collection of good used bikes in your community to help their cause, or donate dollars.

And, remember…Feed Your Good Dog, so your good dog always wins!
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The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there. ~Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values)

And, remember…Feed Your Good Dog, so your good dog always wins!
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It is not by accident that the happiest people are those who make a conscious effort to live useful lives. Their happiness, of course, is not a shallow exhilaration where life is one continuous intoxicating party. Rather, their happiness is a deep sense of inner peace that comes when they believe their lives have meaning and that they are making a difference for good in the world. ~ Ernest Fitzgerald

And, remember…Feed Your Good Dog, so your good dog always wins!
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BIKES FOR THE WORLD IMPROVES THE WORLD ONE BIKE AT A TIME.

“A bike can get someone someplace … from poverty to self sufficiency.”

Bikes for the World (BfW) is a sponsored project of the Washington Area Bicyclist Association whose mission is to collect valuable but unwanted bicycles and related material–parts, tools, and accessories–in the United States and deliver it at low cost to community development programs assisting the poor in developing countries. The bikes donated to BfW partner organizations provide much-needed and affordable transportation to laborers, micro businesspeople, farmers, health workers, and students. Bicycle recipients benefit in proportion to their efforts.

Over the last four years, more than 31,000 bicycles have been donated, and nearly all shipped overseas. 2008 has been the most successful year ever. BfW delivered more than 10,000 bicycles to non-profit partner programs overseas, making jobs, school, and health care accessible to the very poor.

HOW RECIPIENTS BENEFIT

Here are a few people whose lives have been changed for the better because of the work BfW is doing.

• In Uganda, a bicycle made the difference for Mama Alex between backbreaking labor at subsistence wage, and a decent, independent existence.

• In Costa Rica, William Sandoval commutes to his custodial job in a suburb of San José on a road bike purchased on credit for $20 through Bikes for the World’s local partner, Fundación Integral Campesina. Before, he would pay $36 a month for bus fare. The money he saves helps him provide more for his family every month.

• In Ghana, Sara Aidor was in high school and a member of a health education and HIV/AIDS awareness group. She learned about bike maintenance in a special clinic and got her discounted bike from the Village Bicycle Project, a long-term Bikes for the World partner. According to Sara, “We have ridden our bikes to lots of local villages to do plays about hygiene, sanitation and health education. The people need to learn more about these things so they do not get sick.”

HOW VOLUNTEERS BENEFIT

Those who donate their bicycles, volunteer their time, or make monetary donations to Bikes for the World also get a lot in return. The basic reward for those who donate their bicycles is the satisfaction of knowing that your old bike is being put to good use. Beyond that, the 1,500+ volunteers who collected and prepped bikes for shipment or loaded containers this past year learned new skills and worked together toward a common goal…to help improve the lives of others.

Community organizations continue to find sponsoring a bike collection to be a great way to educate, build teamwork, and further their service missions. For their participation, local young people have satisfied Scout, Bar Mitzvah, high school graduation, and other service requirements.

In 2008, Bikes for the World completed the first full year of the Rockville Youth Bicycle Project (RYBP), providing opportunities to local young people to earn a bike, ride a bike safely, and earn community service hours required for high school graduation.

SO FAR IN 2009

Bikes for the World is approaching 6,000 bikes shipped so far in 2009 to Panama Goodwill, Ghana’s Village Bicycle Project, Costa Rica’s Fundacion Integral Campesina, and Uganda’s Women Prisoners Support Organisation. BfW anticipates adding Liberia to the community of partners, and are actively looking at other candidates, in Africa as well as Central America. They have also arranged for Chicago’s Working Bikes Cooperative to ship to Costa Rica, and to WPSO in Uganda, expanding the impact of BfW’s work.

Please check out Bikes for the World online, and if the spirit moves you, help them help improve the lives of others by donating your old bicycle, sponsoring a collection of good used bikes in your community to help their cause, or donate dollars.

And, remember…Feed Your Good Dog, so your good dog always wins!
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Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. ~Margaret Mead

Sam Parker draws on his vast sales and life experiences and brings us the concept of “212 degrees”. He reminds us that it is the extra effort that makes the difference. Sam’s message is powerful. He encourages us to try harder, to give more, and ultimately, enjoy more. Sam also prompts us to remember that our efforts and successes, not only improve our own lives, but can improve the world. Learn more by watching this motivational video or visiting just212.com

And, remember…Feed Your Good Dog, so your good dog always wins!

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The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up. ~Mark Twain

And, remember…Feed Your Good Dog, so your good dog always wins!

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CLEAN AND SAFE DRINKING WATER MADE POSSIBLE BY CHARITY:WATER

Scott Harrison has a special gift. His gift is in his natural ability to successfully promote his clients. Today, Scott’s “client” is a non-profit organization that he founded – charity:water. Charity:water brings clean and safe drinking water to people in 14 developing nations.

In his July 12, 2009 blog post, The New York Times Op-Ed Columnist Nicholas D. Kristof, gives us an idea how Scott uses his “natural gift of promotion” for charity:water to “ensure that every penny from new donors will go to projects in the field.” Kristof tells us that Scott “accomplishes this by cajoling his 500 most committed donors to cover all administrative costs.”

Scott’s journey to charity:water shows us what can happen when one uses their “gift” for good.

Scott graduated from New York University with a communications degree. He spent 10 years in special event planning and promotions, and then started a small upscale event planning and nightclub consultancy business. Kristof says that Scott “spent his nights surrounded by friends in a blur of alcohol… He lived in a luxurious apartment and drove a BMW — but then on a vacation in South America he underwent a spiritual crisis.

‘I realized I was the most selfish, sycophantic and miserable human being,’ he recalled. ‘I was the worst person I knew.’”

Scott decided to see what the opposite of his current life would look like. In August, 2004, he left the event business and all he had worked for in Manhattan to serve for a year as a volunteer photojournalist onboard the Mercy Ship Anastasis in impoverished Liberia, West Africa. – a country with no public electricity, running water or sewage.

There he became familiar with the life-threatening effects of contaminated water and in September 2005, returning home to New York City, he tested the idea behind charity: water by producing a large exhibition of his photographs and videos called mercy. Despite opening in the midst of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, Scott’s mercy. show was a success. Visitors contributed more than $96,000 towards providing medical procedures and freshwater wells in West Africa. Scott returned to West Africa for another 6 month journey in October 2005, before returning to Manhattan in the spring of 2006 to found charity:water.

Over the last 3 years, using his gift, Scott and the charity:water crew have according to Mr. Kristof’s post “raised $10 million (most of that last year alone) from 50,000 individual donors, providing clean water to nearly one million people in Africa and Asia.”

View the following video to see The Idea Camp’s interview with Scott Harrison and learn the details of his incredible journey to charity:water.

The Idea Camp – Scott Harrison from The Idea Camp on Vimeo.

And, remember…Feed Your Good Dog, so your good dog always wins!

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LOOK PAST POLITICS, FOR JUST A MINUTE …

Less than a week ago, Justice Sonia Sotomayor was sworn in to the Supreme Court and became our country’s first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice. Forget all the politics…she is to be admired for taking responsibility and rising to the challenge as a child and young woman to improve herself, and as an adult for being committed to improving the world around her.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor was born to a Puerto Rican family and grew up in a public housing project in the South Bronx. Her dad was a factory worker with a third grade education and died when she was only nine years old. After her father’s death, Sotomayor turned to books for solace and her love of reading and learning grew.

Sotomayor and her brother Juan acquired their strong belief in the power of education from their mom. Sotomayor was driven by an indefatigable work ethic and while managing a diagnosis of juvenile diabetes, she excelled in school. She graduated as valedictorian of her class and won a scholarship to Princeton University.

Sotomayor graduated summa cum laude, and Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton. She was a co-recipient of the M. Taylor Pyne Prize, the highest honor Princeton awards to an undergraduate. At Yale Law School, Justice Sotomayor served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal and as managing editor of the Yale Studies in World Public Order.

Justice Sotomayor’s improved herself through hard work and dedication, and as a result her community has benefitted. On a local level, her favorite project is the Development School for Youth program, which sponsors workshops for inner city high school students. Every semester, approximately 70 students attend 16 weekly workshops that are designed to teach them how to function in a work setting. The workshop leaders include investment bankers, corporate executives and Justice Sotomayor, who conducts a workshop on the law for 25 to 35 students. In addition to the workshop experience, each student is offered a summer job by one of the corporate sponsors. The experience is rewarding for the lawyers and exciting for the students, commented Justice Sotomayor, as “it opens up possibilities that the students never dreamed of before.” [Federal Bar Council News, Sept./Oct./Nov. 2005, p.20] This is one of many ways that Justice Sotomayor is using her education and experience to improve the world and inspire young people to achieve their dreams.

Justice Sotomayor now has the opportunity to role model on a national level. She improved herself and now can improve the world.

Some of the information in this post was extracted from a White House press release which can be read by clicking here.

And, remember…Feed Your Good Dog, so your good dog always wins!

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In Memory of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, 1921 – 2009 One Woman’s Vision

Eunice Kennedy Shriver founded the Special Olympics and, on July 20, 1968, the first Special Olympic Games were held at Soldier Field in Chicago, Illinois.

The Special Olympics was created out of Ms. Shriver’s love and respect for the individual nature of people with intellectual disabilities and her desire to see that they reach their full potential without changing who they inherently are. The bonus, as Ms. Shriver saw it, is that we all change for the better as we allow people with intellectual disabilities grow into all they are meant to be.

In a statement from the Special Olympics on her death, Timothy Shriver says “… it was her unconditional love for the athletes of Special Olympics that so fulfilled her life.”

Her son goes on to say that his mother “…never hoped that people with intellectual disabilities should be somehow changed into something they were not. Rather, she fought throughout her life to ensure that they would be allowed to reach their full potential so that we might in turn be changed by them, forced to recognize our own false assumptions and their inherent gifts.”

To that end, as we learn from the video, the Special Olympics provides individuals with consistent opportunities to realize their potential, develop physical fitness, and establish self confidence thereby enriching both individual lives and communities as a whole.

So it is that Eunice Kennedy Shriver dedicated her life to her “special friends” and through her lifelong tireless efforts created a world stage on which they can inspire us all by improving themselves and improving the world.

And, remember…Feed Your Good Dog, so your good dog always wins!

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The improvement of understanding is for two ends: first, our own increase of knowledge; secondly, to enable us to deliver that knowledge to others.
~John Locke

And, remember…Feed Your Good Dog, so your good dog always wins!

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