Phoenix, AZ – From February 22 through March 31, South Mountain Cycles in Ahwatukee is asking the community to drop-off gently used bicycles to be donated to St. Vincent de Paul’s Shifting Gears Program. Shifting Gears puts young people to work after school, learning to repair and maintain bicycles. Volunteers work with the youths, teaching them new skills and giving them a newfound source of self-confidence. When each participant graduates from the program, he or she gets to choose one of the repaired bikes to keep. Shifting Gears helps to instill confidence in participants as they learn new skills and see the benefit of their hard work for themselves and others. Many of them stay even after they graduate to help teach new students what they know.
Shifting Gears participants aren’t the only ones to benefit from the program. The bikes used for the program are the broken or otherwise unusable bikes that are often donated to the Society. Normally these bikes would be thrown away; now the repaired bikes are given to homeless individuals as transportation when they land a new job.
For more information regarding Recycle-A-Bike, please contact South Mountain Cycles at (480) 706-0858. If you would like to donate a bicycle, South Mountain Cycles is located at 3636 E. Ray Road in the Fry’s Shopping Center.
http://www.stvincentdepaul.net/content/pr/feb/2_19_03.htm
Tags: Anti-poverty strategies
