VBP Bikes Change Lives
Sierra Leone teachers save time and money riding bikes.
Alpha Baye Dumbuya, John Bangura, and Abdul Conteh, (from left to right) are all teachers at the Catholic High School in Lunsar, Sierra Leone. They also do human rights trainings at eight other schools for Amnesty International. They also teach women’s rights, including reproduction.
They depend on the bicycles they got from VBP in April 2011 because the schools are as much as two miles away from each other, and going from home to school to another school before going home at night is costly and time consuming. We are happy to provide teachers with bikes. They are important leaders in their communities, and they sends a strong positive message to the community, and especially the students. Bikes are cool! And practical too!
 |
M’balu gets to school quickly on her bike.Girls in Africa struggle to succeed in school because they have so many demands on their time. Besides homework and walking long distances to school, they also have many household responsibilities. Girls help with farming, child care, hauling water, going to the market and cooking. Riding a bike saves precious time, and allows girls to finish chores and get their school work done, too. |
 |
Simeon saves 2 hours every day riding his new bike.Simeon is from Princesstown, Ghana, at the end of a wretched gravel road 18 km. from the main coastal highway. The road is so bad that taxis won’t go there unless you pay 10 times the standard rate. The lack of transportation means people walk most places they need to go. |
 |
Lovetta learned to ride, and changed her life.Lovetta never knew how to ride a bicycle until VBP came to Lunsar, Sierra Leone. It took 2 weeks of dedicated practice and lots of courage for her to learn to ride as an adult woman. Not only does she use her new bicycle every day to travel the 2 miles she used to walk to and from work at a local mining company, her entire family is also benefiting from the bicycle. They use it to go to the market to buy food, to make social visits around nearby villages and to go to work. All her nearby friends and neighbors admire her for learning how to ride! |
 |
Nkwanta's bike makes life easier for the whole family.Many rural Africans walk hours every day, often carrying heavy loads. Even in the few villages where there is public transportation, the fares are very expensive and people walk to save money. People waste time and energy getting to their farms, which are usually not near homes, getting to school, to carry water, to do business in town, to get to health care. |
 |
Daddy does child care.In Africa, men rarely take care of the children. But whenever Ntow tries to leave home on his bike, his young son begins to cry. So Ntow puts the boy in the bike's child seat and away they go to their farm, for shopping and other errands, like Ntow'scommunity organizing. A side benefit is that the boy's mother is seeing rare relief from child care duties, enabling her to spend more time caring for the household and working in the farm. Among the many benefits in his life, Ntow's bike has caused a shift in gender roles. |
