Bikes Not Bombs Youth Leadership Pathway for Environmental Sustainability
Bikes Not Bombs takes in about 5,000 donated bikes annually, and uses this “waste stream” of used bikes as the raw material for programs that develop youth environmental leadership. We use these bikes that would otherwise be destined for our landfills as a vehicle for individual and community transformation.
About You
Section 1: You
First Name
Samantha
Last Name
Wechsler
Website URL
Organization
Country
Section 2: Your Organization
Organization Name
Bikes Not Bombs
Organization Website
Organization Phone
(617) 522-0222
Organization Address
284 Amory Street, Jamaica Plain, MA 02130
Is your organization a
Non‐profit/NGO/citizen sector organization
Organization Country
United States
Your idea
Name Your Project
Bikes Not Bombs Youth Leadership Pathway for Environmental Sustainability
Country and state your work focuses on
United States, MA
Describe Your Idea
Bikes Not Bombs takes in about 5,000 donated bikes annually, and uses this “waste stream” of used bikes as the raw material for programs that develop youth environmental leadership. We use these bikes that would otherwise be destined for our landfills as a vehicle for individual and community transformation.
Website URL
Innovation
What makes your idea unique?
Bikes Not Bombs envisions the bicycle, the most efficient, sustainable, and economic transportation machine ever invented, playing a major role in the health of communities. Bicycling in the city not only helps ease the harmful effects of traffic congestion, but is also part of the solution to issues like affordable transportation, obesity, and climate change. Our approach is to involve young people in creating community transformation by facilitating their development as critical thinkers, by helping them to become enthusiastic and safe cyclists, and by meeting pressing youth development needs such as job training, academic support, physical fitness, and leadership development. By reaching young cyclists today, we are building the informed, healthy, and engaged citizenry of tomorrow.
BNB’s Youth Leadership Pathway for Environmental Sustainability, like all of our work, is built on the principles of empowerment, leadership, and sustainable change. We build on young people’s fascination with bicycles to instill a sense of responsibility for the environment and the health of our communities; most youth come to BNB simply to earn a bike, but soon discover that they have become part of a purpose-driven community committed to their development as young leaders, environmental advocates, and global citizens.
Our youth programs emphasize learning and earning – young people earn the bike that they learn to refurbish, as well as increased responsibility, respect, competence, and confidence by living up to the high expectations we set for them. And we provide all the necessary supports to ensure that each young person discovers his/her power to succeed.
Do you have a patent for this idea?
Impact
This Entry is about (Issues)
What impact have you had?
Since we established our youth programming in 1990, more than 2,000 young people have graduated from our innovative youth programs. Thousands of bikes are back out on the road where they belong (instead of in our landfills), and youth from some of Boston’s most impoverished neighborhoods have been empowered to discover their own path—not one that they are pressured into by the negative influences that often surround young people from low-income areas—but one that they have found in the safe haven of Bikes Not Bombs. The most inspiring indicators of our success, however, are not the numbers of young people we reach, but the stories that they themselves share about the depth of transformation they experience because of their participation in BNB programs. For example:
Last year, a summer Youth Instructor who was referred to us because of his involvement in a gang, said, “I used to teach kids how to cock a gun. Now I teach them to fix bikes.”
Another twelve year old in our Earn-A-Bike program said one evening, “Bikes Not Bombs meets my needs for love and belonging.”
And David said, “I feel like I’ve really inspired other kids on my street to get a job; they see me working, and, because I’m one of the oldest on my block, they think it’s cool. It feels really good to be a role model like that.”
These are just a few examples of many.
Problem
Through our Youth Leadership Pathway, we work to address two critical issues facing our communities and our planet: environmental degradation and violence. The neighborhoods in which we work, where air quality is poor and asthma rates are higher than anywhere else in the state, will be more acutely affected by degrading air quality as a result of climate change. Poor air quality has been linked to higher than average heart disease and stroke morbidity rates, and the risk is considerably higher for youth exposed to high levels of air pollution during the developmental stages of their life.
Violence is another pressing issue and critical factor in overall environmental health. The negative impacts of racism, street violence, gangs, and drug abuse prevent youth from having experiences that encourage them to succeed in school, in their communities, and in life. For many of our teens, BNB is their only safe haven.
Actions
Last year we laid the groundwork for expanding our Youth Leadership Pathway and developed a new opportunity for our emerging youth leaders called BNB Ambassadors for Environmental Sustainability. The goal of this new step along the Pathway is to significantly broaden our impact by developing an organizing component to our programming that reaches more young people and advocating for better biking conditions—particularly in low-income areas. In addition, the effort has deepened the leadership capacities of the emerging leaders themselves; their skills have increased by leaps and bounds, and they are even more deeply invested in effecting lasting change.
Youth present the greatest opportunity for impact, as they have not yet developed a dependence on cars, and they have the greatest power to shape cultural trends. We are poised to take this work to scale and significantly expand our reach—the only thing standing in our way is sufficient resources.
Results
We expect the following results from this initiative:
-20 youth will be employed as Lead Ambassadors, educating both their peers in BNB programs and the Boston youth community at-large.
-100 youth from will earn a bike and develop the skills to both maintain it and ride it safely in the city. These youth will be given the opportunity to participate in our Ambassador Program.
-100 additional youth will receive training in safe urban riding and/or participate in rides and activities that ensure healthy and environmentally low-impact lifestyles.
-Youth Ambassadors for Sustainability will research bike culture and bike privilege in Boston, learning why other youth do or do not ride.
-Boston-area youth will gain an understanding of the relationship between sustainable transportation and climate change. Ambassadors will develop a presentation on the topics of transportation justice, climate change and infrastructure equity.
-Attitudes about biking will begin to change in the youth community. Through a cultural change/education campaign, BNB youth will lead a project or campaign aimed at effecting the perception of cycling as a form of transportation among youth.
What will it take for your project to be successful over the next three years? Please address each year separately, if possible.
The success of the next three years depends heavily upon the groundwork that is being laid now. This includes sufficient education and training for both our Youth Ambassadors and our program staff.
In the first year, Ambassadors will be trained by BNB program coordinators and will work together on a single campaign. It is our hope that with a solid foundation, these youth will be able to train future Ambassadors, providing opportunities for authentic youth leadership and youth-led initiatives. We have seen this model work time and time again with our Youth Instructors, who help lead our Earn-A-Bike, Girls in Action and On-the-Bike programs. It is commonplace for youth program participants to ask if they can be Youth Instructors one day–– a testament to both the success of the BNB youth program model and to the potential that young people have to be effective and empowered leaders.
Finally, within our third year we hope to develop multiple committees of Ambassadors for Environmental Sustainability. The committees would be headed by the more senior Lead Ambassadors and each committee would be able to work on a different project–– such as an event, cultural campaign or infrastructure advocacy effort–– depending on the skills and interests of the Ambassadors.
Success throughout all of these phases requires a combination of careful planning and resources. Fortunately, we have already cultivated many valuable partnerships with environmental and youth-serving organizations, such as the Alliance for Climate Education (ACE) and the Roxbury Environmental Empowerment Project (REEP). These collaborations have a benefit far beyond their practical support in planning and training. Through these relationships, each group has realized they are not working alone, but rather within a rich community of civically-engaged and socially concerned young people.
What would prevent your project from being a success?
The primary limiting factor that threatens long-term success is resources. Bikes Not Bombs is already a very lean organization that fully maximizes that use of its dedicated volunteers and passionate staff members. We have a strong reputation in the community for “doing a lot with very little”—people who walk through our doors are always amazed by the number of volunteers and youth they see making things happen. For instance, every Wednesday night for 20 years we have had between 20 and 40 volunteers (some who have been with us for many years and others every week who are brand new to BNB) processing the thousands of bikes that we salvage and find a new life for.
We have been tremendously successful on a smaller scale, and are now poised to expand our work throughout the city. In focus groups conducted by the Boston Collaborative for Food and Fitness in 2008, Boston residents called for a Bikes Not Bombs in every neighborhood of the city. We have the systems, the infrastructure, a proven curriculum and approach, strong partnerships with other non-profit organizations and the City of Boston, broad-based buy-in from community members, and a compelling vision ready to be carried out by a passionate and diverse group of adults and young people.
How many people will your project serve annually?
101‐1000
What is the average monthly household income in your target community, in US Dollars?
Less than $50
Does your project seek to have an impact on public policy?
Yes
Sustainability
What stage is your project in?
Operating for more than 5 years
In what country?
United States, MA
Is your initiative connected to an established organization?
Yes
If yes, provide organization name.
Bikes Not Bombs, Inc.
How long has this organization been operating?
More than 5 years
Does your organization have a Board of Directors or an Advisory Board?
Yes
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with NGOs?
Yes
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with businesses?
Yes
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with government?
Yes
Please tell us more about how these partnerships are critical to the success of your innovation.
As a community organization, Bikes Not Bombs actively seeks collaboration with other organizations. We regularly collaborate on projects and events in order to better serve the youth in our community and to leverage limited resources. Bikes Not Bombs was in fact started as a movement rather than an organization, and has stayed true over the years to its collaborative approach, believing whole-heartedly that what people and organizations can achieve together will be far greater than what can be achieved alone. It is a value we instill in our youth and demonstrate in the way we approach all of our activities. Part of what makes our youth programs successful is the fact that we open the door for young people to a community of cyclists, giving them a sense of connection beyond the walls of Bikes Not Bombs.
What are the three most important actions needed to grow your initiative or organization?
The three most important actions needed to grow our organization are: 1) expand staff capacity to coordinate a scaled-up program, 2) develop a strategic plan, both for the organization overall and individual programs, and 3) secure the necessary financial resources to adequately support the program.
As mentioned earlier, BNB is a very lean organization. We have only two youth programs staff members, one of whom works part-time during the winter months, to coordinate and lead six very intensive youth programs (our youth programs operate every single day). We lead an Adult Instructor Training every year, in which adults enroll in an intensive 30-hour training in exchange for thirty volunteer hours in our youth programs. With these adult volunteers and our paid teen instructors, we are able to offer a 1:2 instructor-to-student ratio, ensuring a 95-100% graduation rate. To take our work to the next level, however, and spread our work across the city, we will need increased staff capacity.
We envision BNB Youth Ambassadors across the city leading bike rides, teaching bike safety, fixing flat tires and other mechanical problems at stands on street corners, at farmer’s markets, and at community centers … and demonstrating the power of young people to truly change the world! What we need now is a clear-cut strategic plan to help us to get from here to there. We have launched a strategic planning process that will involve board members, staff, youth, volunteers, and other stakeholders. We expect to have a completed strategic planning in the fall of 2010.
Our third critical action is securing the resources for program materials. We are expanding our donor base and redoubling our strategic fundraising efforts in ways that build on our success by engaging and empowering donors as true partners in our work.
The Story
What was the defining moment that led you to this innovation?
In 1989, Bikes Not Bombs founder Carl Kurz returned to Boston’s inner city, having spent 5 years building up bike programs in Nicaragua with used bikes collected and shipped from the US. The mechanics training, specialty tools, and supply of donated used bikes jumpstarted a whole bicycle industry in Nicaragua, both creating jobs and making this affordable, efficient, and environmentally-friendly vehicle a transportation option for many more people. But BNB trainers had realized that to be truly powerful, this could not just be aid from outside - the programs needed to be rooted in their local communities. In 1989 the Nicaraguan shops transitioned to full local ownership and control, with continued support and shipments from Boston. Back in Boston, inner-city gang violence was heating up into one of the worst periods in its history, and BNB organizers saw their own community’s youth caught up in violence and despair that resulted from lack of econonomic opportunities and social inequities. Bikes Not Bombs decided that its work must become rooted in its own community at home in Boston, and decided to focus on youth as the most vulnerable people who also have the most potential for future change. BNB did not yet have its own building for mechanics classroom space, but secured a grant from the City of Boston Transportation Department and ran a summer program for teens outdoors on playgrounds, using bike trailers to bring the bikes and portable tools and stands each day. The teens were agents in their own empowerment, learning the mechanics hands-on and completing the work to build up their own bicycles which they kept at the end of the program. This became the model for the Earn-A-Bike program, which expanded into Girls In Action and other programs in what is now a vibrant youth center, employing teen graduates as leaders to help teach their peers and continue this powerful community work.
Tell us about the social innovator behind this idea.
Carl Kurz founded Bikes Not Bombs (BNB) in 1984. Carl grew up in Illinois, and in his youth he spent 4 years on crutches due to one leg being slightly shorter than the other. This was difficult for a young person trying to fit in with his peers, but Carl found mobility and freedom on the bicycle. With a special pedal, bicycle racing became an accessible sport. At the end of his teens Carl moved to Texas to work as a bicycle mechanic and shop manager, and there he became deeply involved in environmentalism and the anti-nuclear movement. Organizing against the Seabrook nuclear power plant brought Carl to Boston, where he settled in the early 1980's and began exploring ways to build an organization to use the bicycle as a vehicle for social change. Spurred on by the Reagan administration's sponsorship of the Contra War in Nicaragua, Carl formed Bikes Not Bombs as part of a solidarity movement to work against militarism and to bring environmentally-sustainable economic development to ordinary people of Nicaragua. This solidarity movement found broad popular support in the US among churches, community groups, even towns of Massachusetts that formed sister-city relationships with Nicaraguan towns. From 1984 to 1990, Carl spent much of each year in Nicaragua setting up bicycle programs and businesses that were supported by used bicycles collected and shipped from the US. Some of these shops specifically employed physically-disabled people, which held a special resonance with Carl due to his own struggles in youth. In 1990 Carl and BNB volunteers initiated bicycle programs for Boston youth. Carl is fluent in Spanish and skilled in welding, metalworking, and design and construction of cargo-carrying bicycles. He has advocated at the city level for urban planning that gives priority to cyclists and public transportation. He sees the bicycle as a part of a larger movement for environmental sustainability, and he is knowledgeable on natural ecosystems and appropriate technology designs for agriculture and alternative energy. Carl is part owner of a house in Roxbury (part of Boston's inner city) where he grows vegetables, fruit and flowers in his 3,000 square-foot urban garden.
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