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Boom and Bust- Annual Report for 2003
From Dave Peckham, Director
2003 has been a boom and bust year for the Village Bicycle Project.
Bike shipments to Ghana more than doubled, totaling 2,500 bikes this
year. We held twice as many workshops as ever before, with more than
235 people receiving discounted bikes and repair training. We're
starting a new Earn-a-Bike program with school kids in January. The
tools program continues, with progress as well as obstacles. However,
a funding shortage threatens to shut down all programs except for the
bikes shipments, which is self-sufficient.
We're now getting bikes from community bicycle groups in Seattle,
Boston, New York and Essex England, who all together sent six
containers this year. Following is our bike collecting partners and
their totals for this year:
Bikes Not Bombs, Boston 986 bikes.
Bike Works, Seattle 939*
Re-Cycle, of Essex, England 361
Re-Cycle a Bicycle, New York 350
*includes almost 300 collected from our home base neighborhood around
Moscow, Idaho, and Pullman and Spokane, Washington.
Our partners in Ghana, George Aidoo and Samson Ayine sell most of the
bikes to cover shipping costs. I learned on my visit this summer that
most of their buyers are young men and teenagers, who buy just a few
bikes, and then fix them for resale. I was delighted to learn that our
bikes are providing an honest income for more than 20 young men.
There also appears to be a growing number of bikes in use throughout
the areas I visited and I saw that bike prices have fallen in the
capital Accra by about 20% over the last two years. This is
certainly due to an increase in the supply of bikes, as prices for just
about everything else is rising because of inflation. VBP is proud to
be a part in the improved availability and lower prices of bikes in
Ghana.
|
New bike owners, after the workshop at
Adaklu, November 2002. |
Repair Training--
One day workshops
Earn-a-Bike
The word is out in southeast Ghana about our workshops, where you can
get a bike for half-price after attending a one-day workshop on
maintenance and repair. We had more than 25 requests for workshops,
mostly from that part of the country. We only had funding for eight,
yet have done twelve already this year. The workshops mostly help the
productive poor, those who will be able to use the bikes to improve
their livelihoods: people like Gloria Osei, of Liati Wote, who bought
a bike at a workshop in her village last year. Her bicycle helps to
reduce transportation costs for taking her produce to sell at markets
in neighboring villages. The workshop she said, "helped me a lot to
learn how to take care of my bicycle." |
Parts vendors in the Accra bike market.
They are happy to have the tools they need
for parting out bike carcasses. This photo
was taken in 2000. Today the raised area
behind them is filled with more parts and
vendors. |
Tools Program
In July we took delivery on $1000 in tools from Taiwan, but problems
with shipping and customs more than doubled the cost. George and
Samson were too busy with bikes to manage tool sales, so I packed my
panniers full and rode to the bike market. It is a teeming place near
the center of the city, with rows of bikes and piles of parts, hordes
of people passing by, and my friends, the bikes and parts sellers.
This is where I first met George and Samson four years ago, and
everyone knows me and knows that I know where the tools are. For two
years I'd left G and S to sell tools to this aggressive crowd, and word
spread quickly that on this day I was selling, and that I was giving my
old friends a special break. I was nearly mobbed, and had to control
the crowd. Everyone wanted to see everything, and tools went around
for observation. I noticed that two pedal wrenches went missing, and
had to put everything away and stop all sales until the tools returned.
After about ten minutes they did.
Over several days I sold over 200 pieces, at about half of cost,
(inflated by customs over-charges). One parts seller named Cico, with
partners in Nigeria (eight times the size of Ghana) took an interest in
buying in bulk. I had done a little business with him two years before,
and he had been difficult. He offered an apology, saying "Now I know
how to work with you." With this comment I was struck by how much it
means that I keep returning to Ghana. Cico ended up with more than 300
tools, and VBP now has gotten better bike tools into Nigeria.
The response I got in the market speaks volumes about what these tools
that I introduced here four years ago have come to mean to these guys
and their work. Kwame, a seller of used parts said of the freewheel
remover, "Before I would suffer a lot to remove a free[wheel], and
often it would spoil, but now it comes off with ease." Repairs that
they were hesitant to attempt, because pounding out parts often broke
them, can now be made with confidence and economy.
If these tools become popular in Nigeria, we may be able to order
larger volumes and get better prices. First, we have to solve the
problems with customs. No, first we have to solve the funding
problems!
Tools subsidies have cost VBP over $2000 the last two years, an expense
I think is necessary for the introduction of the tools, and a very
appropriate kind of gift from the wealthy people of the world to the
impoverished and struggling. Tools to fix bicycles validate a humble
occupation, improve skills, and play an important part in making bikes
more economically available to the general public.
|
The numbers
Our workshops cost about $280 each. They are a wonderful grassroots
effort to get bikes directly into the hands of rural residents, who use
them to help make ends meet. Globalization is taking a terrible toll on
subsistence farmers in Africa, millions of whom are undercut by cheap
imported food. The problem is, if they can't afford to farm, what
will they do? There are no jobs in the cities. With improved
mobility, less time is spent walking to farms and markets, and more
time can be spent working and growing food, and this helps locally
grown food compete with imports. We held 12 workshops this year, but
will not be able to continue them without additional financial support
.
So, if you'd like to see our tools and workshops programs continue,
please donate. Here's what your donations will do:
[Insert 'A' here and delete the following]
$6 subsidies a set of four of the tools most popular with the
mechanics
$10 subsidizes a bike for one of our workshop recipients
$20 buys a tool kit for the village
$13 pays for additional tools we give to village bike mechanics who
attend our workshops
$280 pays for a workshop; a one-day repair training for 20 people,
who buy subsidized bikes for half price. You can donate a workshop to
a targeted community, like we did this year in Elmina and Kopeyia.
$425 funds an Earn-a-Bike program, six weeks of comprehensive repair
and skills for life training for youth, who receive a free bike upon
graduation.
Project totals are charted below. You can see how our three programs
have grown in the four years since VBP started.
|
Project Totals
| Project totals |
1999 |
2000 |
2001 |
2002 |
2003 |
total |
| bikes shipped |
2 |
364 |
388 |
1,322 |
2,636 |
4,712 |
| workshops* |
0,4 |
4,6 |
7,9 |
4,8 |
12,12 |
39 |
| bikes distributed in
workshops |
0 |
72 |
114 |
80 |
237 |
503 |
| tools introduced |
45 |
497 |
382 |
1,104 |
1,085 |
3,113 |
| *In the early years we
experimented with several forms of workshops before settling on our
present
format, one-day long, twenty students who receive bikes for half
price. The
first number is our current format, the second is all workshops for
that
year. |
|
Budget 2004
| Village
Bicycle Project Budget 2004 |
| |
|
EXPENSE |
INCOME |
| Bikes shipments |
8 @ $4500 |
36,000 |
|
| |
Bikes sales reimbursements |
|
37,200 |
| |
Collection logistics |
450 |
|
| Workshops |
12 one-day@$280 |
3,360 |
|
| |
Earn-a-Bike, 3 sessions at 4 schools, @ $300
|
3,600 |
|
| Tools |
1,100 pieces |
1,000 |
|
| |
shipping and customs |
1,000 |
|
| |
sales |
|
1,500 |
| Administration |
|
|
|
| |
communications |
350 |
|
| |
office |
250 |
|
| |
travel US-Ghana |
1,600 |
|
| |
memberships, visas, etc |
100 |
|
| |
meals |
0 |
|
| |
Director's salary |
0 |
|
| TOTALS |
|
47,710 |
38,700 |
|
Conclusion
For 2004, our goal is to continue current levels of service, and add the
Earn-a-Bike program, which is already funded through summer, thanks to
the work of Emily Lin, our volunteer in Ghana. So we need to raise
about $7,500 to keep up.
Send your tax-deductible donations to
Village Bicycle Project
c/o PCEI
Box 8596
Moscow, ID 83843
For more information, you can email ghanabikes@yahoo.com
Thanks to all for your support in the past and to your continued
support for our efforts to help improve life for the disadvantaged
people of Africa with economical, appropriate, and environmentally
friendly transportation, including the following:
Jordanna Foundation, Gordon and Mary Braun, the Waritz family,
Tri-State Distributors, Paradise Creek Bicycles, Bike Works,
International Bicycle Fund, Park Tool, Dishman Dodge in Spokane, Pedal
Pals of Spokane, Inland Northwest Peace Corps Association, Mike
Driscoll, Delores Schwindt, Douglas Hawley, the Donart Family, Ina,
Kiwanis Club of Moscow, Dean and Gretchen Stewart, Gary Queener, Chris
LaPaglia, Mare Rosenthal, Greg Brown, David Vollmer, Ariana Dickinson,
Dean Pittenger, Julia Piaskowsky, Palouse Center for Legal Access,
Bryan Burke, Wheatley School in Old Westbury New York, Steve
Finkelstein, George and Kathleen Weir, Leroy Lee, Lizandra Vidal, Mary
Forker, Annie Lefebvre, Kellin Gellming, Brad Neuman, Gerry Sokolik,
Penny Floyd and Charles R. Lahin, Brenda and Ray von Wandruska, Sally
and Robert Vorhies, Tom and JoAnn Trail, Janet Le Compte, Sean, Jon
Lamoreux, Julia, Julie, Harry Moore, Dusty, Kathy Dickerson, Merry
Farrington, Kelly Moore, Recycle-a-Bicycle, Bikes Not Bombs
Best wishes for the New Year
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