Pedals for Progress, a New Jersey-based charitable organization has collected more than 80,000 used bicycles since 1991 and distributed them in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Ghana, Pakistan, Kenya and other countries mostly in Africa and Central America
Wilmington teen leads world aid effort
By EDWARD L. KENNEY
The News Journal
09/17/2004
Neglected bicycles often collect dust and cobwebs in a garage or basement. A Wilmington teenager wants to put them to good use, giving people in underdeveloped countries a way to get around.
Christina Fierro, 17, has collected 14 repairable bikes so far. And that's just from people who will not be able to go to the bicycle collection she organized for Saturday next to Fairfax Shopping Center, near her Wilmington home.
"I've always been interested in different countries and things going on around the world," said Christina, a senior at Ursuline Academy in Wilmington who says she wouldn't mind working for the United Nations one day. "It sounded like a good way to help people."
For several months, Fierro has been tacking up road signs about the bicycle collection, distributing news releases and doing whatever she could to get the word out.
"I was proud of her initiative," said her mom, Meg, a teacher at Ursuline who has helped out.
Fierro is getting volunteer help, but the idea to sponsor the collection is all hers, springing from a tenet taught at Ursuline to help people who need it, her mother said.
The idea for the bike collection came to Fierro after she met someone who mentioned Pedals for Progress, a New Jersey-based charitable organization that has collected more than 80,000 used bicycles since 1991 and distributed them in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Ghana, Pakistan, Kenya and other countries mostly in Africa and Central America.
"Every year, affluent Americans buy 15-20 million new bicycles and discard unknown millions of old ones," the organization says.
Pedals for Progress typically holds about 75 collections in New Jersey each year but goes outside the state periodically, including to Delaware and as far as the Midwest, said AnneMarie Rolls, an organization manager. Usually a civic group or church sponsors the event. It is rare to see an individual such as Fierro take on a solo project, she said.
On average, the collection sites receive about 80 bikes, Rolls said. But two years ago a Doylestown, Pa., Eagle Scout collected 400 bikes on his way to earning a Scout badge.
Fierro has been taking the project very seriously, calling periodically over the past several months to ask questions and making sure everything runs smoothly, said Rolls, who is expecting the teen's efforts to pay off big Saturday, weather permitting.
Pedals for Progress will send a rental truck to the collection site at Aldersgate United Methodist Church to pick up the bikes and bring them to High Bridge, N.J., for shipment, Fierro said.
Although she is not a member of the church, she picked Aldersgate as the collection site because it is so close to her home and a visible point of reference for people bringing the bikes. The church has been very helpful, she said, and has spread the word about the collection through periodic mailing to its members.
Pedals for Progress also asks people to bring sewing machines and soccer and baseball equipment to the collections, because these items also are badly needed, Rolls said. The organization requires that each bike or other item include an accompanying $10 donation to help pay shipping and other expenses.
Rolls said the total cost from collection to shipping averages about $28 per item, with contributions from individuals and corporations making up the difference.
Pedals for Progress president and founder David Schweidenback, who got the idea for the charity when he was a Peace Corps worker in Ecuador, said the bikes make a real difference.
"If you have an economy where everyone walks all the time, everything is slowed down," he said. "The wheel, mankind's greatest invention, hasn't gotten there yet.
"We put adults on wheels so they can get where they need to go," he said. The bicycles help their society grow naturally, just as our country did in the Industrial Revolution when everybody was on bikes. You have to pass through that step in society to get to higher steps."
Contact Edward L. Kenney at 324-2891 or ekenney@delawareonline.com.
