Do you need more space in your garage? Are there any unwanted bicycles in there? You could help yourself and families in Africa by donating your unwanted bikes to Re~Cycle: Bikes to Africa.
People living in rural Africa often walk for miles each day to fetch water, or to get to school or work. However, a bike can change someone’s life.
Re~Cycle: Bikes to Africa is based in Colchester, but has a collection point on the Isle of Wight at Innerspaces in Cowes. 3 times a year, donated bikes are loaded on to a truck (loaned by Bartletts, free of charge) and driven by a volunteer to the mainland headquarters – thanks to support from Wightlink.
In Colchester, the bikes are checked over and carefully packed into shipping containers and sent to one of the partner organisations in Ghana, South Africa, Zambia or the Gambia where local people refurbish them and distribute them to people living in rural communities. Their website re-cycle.org has more information.
At a local level, one of the volunteers, Sue Bailey said ‘We are always happy to receive unwanted, adult sized bicycles. It doesn’t matter if they have flat tyres, need new brakes, need the gears adjusting or are a little rusty. All of those things can be easily remedied. However, we cannot use them if they are totally seized up and rusted through. Nor, sadly, can we transport children’s bicycles.’
Unfortunately, bicycles cannot usually be collected, but they can be taken seven days a week to Innerspaces, Place Road, Cowes. Sue continued, ‘The staff at Innerspaces are very helpful. They accept the bikes on our behalf and store them, free of charge, until we have enough for a truckload.’ Innerspaces is open from 8.30-5.30 weekdays, 9-5 Saturdays and 10-4 Sundays.
So, dig out your unwanted bicycle and change a life in Africa.
Sadly Africa has been a bottomless pit of charity for decades. Like all who are kept by charity handouts, they never change their ways, as we see with here in the UK, those with the lowest iq and the most impoverished ensure the ‘charity’ keeps flowing by having the most offspring.
IF your life was so very hard, then you would not wish young little lives to endure such, and you would know by having so many YOUR life would be that much harder.
NOW many no longer wait in their countries for the charity to arrive but instead inflict the SOURCE of charity directly by arriving in the West and then go on breeding our once decent counties into overcrowding, poverty and sadly in many cases as we see daily, the vilest of crimes.
Whilst many are in need because of their continual breeding, I would rather not give any aid to Africa now, as, with easy internet information available to all, the gift of cycles just means we will get the other half of Africa coming here to inflict their damage, just that little bit faster.
Clifton Grade would by my choice of recycling the cycle. It may just save a Londoner’s life.