Donate Your Old Bicycles to Pedals for Progress

Are they cluttering up your garage? Have your kids outgrown them? Have they been replaced by the latest model?

If you have extra bicycles in your garage or basement but don’t know what to do with them, then load them in your car and bring them to the parking lot at the on Saturday, April 28, from 9 a.m. to noon and donate them to Pedals for Progress.

“Basically, it’s a good community service type of project,” said Joseph Xerri, a member of the South River/East Brunswick Rotary Club, which is sponsoring the event. “It helps people around here because it helps them clean out their sheds a little bit. But in some countries, third world countries, people have to walk three miles to go to work every day. So then, these bikes basically provide transportation so they can start making a living.”

Pedals for Progress collects 5,000 to 7,000 bicycles annually and ships them to those in need. To date, more than 133,500 have been shipped to developing countries in Latin America, Africa and Eastern Europe. In these countries the bikes are reconditioned by partner agencies and distributed at low cost to poor working adults. These bikes provide them with reliable transportation for commuting to work, transporting produce to market, or accessing health care and other services.

It costs $40 to collect, process, ship, rebuild and distribute each bicycle, and the Rotary Club is asking for a minimum $10 donation along with each bicycle to help defray the cost. All cash and material donations are fully tax deductible and a receipt will be available at the collection site.

Anyone with an adult or child’s bicycle in repairable condition is urged to donate his or her bike to the cause. In addition, the Rotary Club also will be collecting  working, portable sewing machines to ship to the same areas the bikes will go.

During the collection, members of the Rotary Club will pack the bicycles before they are shipped and reassembled in their new homes.

“Usually will be put into a shape either here or on the other side,” said Xerri. “They’ll make sure they’re usable. But once on other side what actually happens is they’ll sell them for a very small amount, even if just a few dollars.”

Pedals for Progress is a 501 (c) (3) corporation and a registered charity in New Jersey. Brochures explaining this innovative program will be available at the collection site. Pedals for Progress also needs donations of wrenches for its overseas shops. For more information about the group’s projects, visit www.p4p.org.

For more information on the local charity or on the Rotary Club, call Ralph at 732-0238-1224 or send an email to RotarySREB@aol.com.