This
book is for anyone considering building a program and eventually a whole
organization around the goal of helping people with bicycles. This excerpt from
the preface will help you decide if it would be a useful tool for you:
“Because
people who live in or even near poverty are so consumed by the daily stress of
survival they cannot engage in society. This often means isolation from
community activities and even well-meaning programs designed to serve them.
Unfortunately, such charitable service programs neglect to actually engage the
people they are meant to serve, the very people who understand the struggle and
language of their neighbors.
The
Social Bike Business program is designed to bridge all of these gaps by guiding
struggling people toward their own entrepreneurial success. Advantaged people
are well served by bike shops, collectives and co-ops. Now it’s time to create
the places that invite our most disadvantaged neighbors to purchase their own
bike—refurbished or manufactured locally through the program—and engage in a
new career that will enable them to lift themselves out of poverty. Even
obtaining a quality transportation bicycle can save a person several hours each
day if they had been walking and save them thousands of hard-earned dollars
each year. Bicycles shrink cities at no charge. But this program does far more
than that. It establishes bicycle community centers where struggling people can
learn from each other about transportation bicycling and careers in bicycle
business and beyond.
In the
following chapters, you will learn how to plan for and launch your own Social
Bike Business program, adapted to the needs and specialties of your particular
community to ensure you reach your most disadvantaged neighbors. Your program
can be as small as needed to succeed or as immense and complex as you believe
you and your team can achieve. Think of this book as a menu to pick from rather
than a prepared meal. Start where it makes sense for you and your team and go
as far as you need to go. You might already have a small shop that would
suffice as the main center for your program, so keep this in mind as you read
about large centers designed for larger programs than yours needs to be. You
and your team might want to focus on job training and refurbished used bikes.
Then skip the chapter on bicycle manufacturing. This book is yours to do with
what you like. Pull out the pieces that sing to you and shut the volume off on
all the rest.
As you
read, you will learn how to place the most disadvantaged people first and how
to help them purchase their own bike through micro credit and subsidy
qualification so they will value their bike. You will learn how to spot talents
in people and offer a variety of career paths all based on bicycles, but
designed to help them find work in many different fields, from business
management to customer service to mechanics to owning their own business. You
will learn proven business practices that ensure all employees of your program
are paid a market rate salary. You will find ways to overcome the relentless
stress and fear of poverty. And from this insight, you will learn how to choose
the most effective means of reaching and engaging your community’s most
disadvantaged residents—their preferred way of communicating, the locations
most inviting to them, what they need in order to attend a meeting or workshop
including food and childcare, and many more vital details that are commonly
forgotten in today’s bicycle businesses and programs.
Be sure
to study Chapter 1 because that is where you will have to be honest with
yourself and your local leadership team. Are you envisioning a more casual and
fun volunteer program that gives bikes away? A co-op or collective might be a
better fit. Such programs can build the bike culture. You might also be a
budding for-profit business owner. For-profit bike shops are necessary elements
of every bicycling community and a very honorable path to take.
If you
choose Social Bike Business, one important requirement is that you must live in
the community and be prepared to help lead the organization that takes on the
program. I have encountered several well-meaning people who are enthusiastic
about the program but expect others to take it on without their assistance.
They see its potential in another community or believe that an organization
they do not lead should take it on. In fact, the only way for you to succeed
with the program is to step into a leadership position and inspire others to
join you in building this program so it serves the community where all of you
live. No program can thrive if it is started or run by outsiders.
We
understand that Social Bike Business is not for everyone and, in order to
succeed, each local program must compliment rather than compete with existing
for-profit bike shops and co-ops/collectives. Each Social Bike Business program
must fill an unfilled niche. That niche is service to and full engagement of
the most disadvantaged people in each community. By filling that niche, Social
Bike Business is designed to enable people to find their own path out of
poverty through bicycles. Eighty percent of the world’s population is living in
poverty (World Bank 2008). The Social Bike Business program opens a world of
opportunities to them through bicycling. For this, they will continue to ride
and perhaps even take up sport cycling. This will grow the whole bicycle
movement and boost the bike industry as these formerly-poor join the advantaged
bicycle enthusiasts of their community.
Social
Bike Business is not about profits or charity. It is about helping people stand
up against and defy poverty. Social Bike Business is about giving impoverished
people the tools they need to leave poverty behind forever.”
Does
that sound intriguing? You can buy your copy at any book vendor – local book
store or online – or buy it through our website at www.OneStreet.org .
Do you
already have a copy? Please leave a comment about how you have used the book to
build your program.
Sue
