Saturday, October 31, 2009

Bikes To Work Program Is Humming Again Thanks To A Bike Shop

Here's a great story about bicycling and charity out of South Dakota.

Bicycle Stories correspondent Jose sends this video. Jose says it's about a charity in Sioux Falls, South Dakota called the Center of Hope, which has a "Bikes for Work" program to provide bicycles for low-income people to get to their jobs. (Many of the bikes are free, but they charge $2 or $5 for some of the others.)

Last year it distributed about 500 bikes, but earlier this year the charity was down to 5 or 6 bikes, and it looked like it might have to close the program. Then the owner of a bicycle store called the Two Wheeler Dealer, inspired by the Cash for Clunkers program, started offering people $50 store credits to bring in their old bikes. In two months he got about 100 bikes. He and his employees fixed them up, and he donated a lot of them to the charity's Bikes for Work program.

Check out the video here.

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