When Jenya had his bike stolen from school property during school hours, he joined the many Calgary youth who don’t have access to bicycles.
But that changed on July 31, when Youth En Route gave away some 30 bikes to students, as part of their ongoing mission to meet demand for bikes.
Now, with his new bike, Jenya is looking forward to hanging out outside and talking with friends during the rest of summer.
Laura Shutiak, founder of Youth En Route , said that as transportation is an issue for many students and that the organization tries to make accessing bikes as easy as possible.
“These bikes are bikes that have been donated to us through a whole range of ways. We work with partners around the city to get them refurbished. We have our group of seniors at the Greater Forest Lawn Senior Center. It’s called the bike hub, and they fixed up about 10 bikes a week,” Shutiak said.
For Thursday’s event, bikes were unloaded from a Uhaul truck into the parking lot of Forrest Lawn High School.
After reaching over 2,900 students in the spring through their cycling programs with Calgary schools, Youth En Route had over 300 kids on their list to receive bikes—demand that is still being worked as of July.
Providing bikes for kids who have never ridden one before
Shutiak said that participants in the cycling classes range in experience. After the classes, the organization does what they can to provide interested students with bikes, all free of cost.
“So in a typical phys ed class at a school like Forest Lawn, about 10 per cent of kids have never been on a bike, or have very, very limited cycling experience. The rest of them are kind of a range, but we would definitely say that more kids are not familiar with using a bike as transportation than they are. So we open so many windows, so many opportunities for these kids to have a different way of transportation,” she said.
“In many cases, they didn’t even know they wanted a bike until we took them for a bike ride and then taught them how to do it. And then they’re like, ‘oh, this might be a good way to get around’”.
The experience of providing bikes for students has been remarkable according to Shutiak.
“We know that it’s super empowering that we give a kid a bike and they can literally go and create their path, they can do things like get jobs or help their families in ways that that they couldn’t before, because transportation is a big issue, and it really delivers independence for these kids,” she said.
“We’re not giving them a bike, we’re giving them the keys to the city.”
Shutiak said that bike rack audits have been a main stay in measuring Youth en Route’s success so far.
“We look at how kids are getting around, and when we see bike racks that are filled at schools, we know that we’re having an impact.”
“We do Bike Rack audits, we go and count bikes, and when we see more bikes there, we’re really happy, because we know that those kids have gotten there and in an independent, healthy, sustainable way.”
