Progress Report: Week 5

At the halfway point

We are five weeks into our ten week campaign, and busier than ever. 
On Monday, nearly 1100 Bell helmets arrived and were moved up to the refurbishing floor. They were shipped in over 500 boxes, two to a box, in a variety of sizes from toddler to adult. We’ve already started to unpack and sort them in preparation for giving them away on December 11.

During the week we hosted over 50 volunteers who devoted over 300 hours to refurbishing bicycles. We’ve cleaned, refurbished, and repaired over 1000 of our bikes—all of the bikes smaller than 18” wheel size and a good number of the larger ones as well, leaving about 600 remaining to be worked on. Of course, the remaining bikes have derailleurs and caliper brakes and involve more time and effort to refurbish, so we can’t slow down at all! Please continue to sign up, and bring your friends! Our friends at the Family Bike Shop and the Bolts team from the Maryland Interscholastic Cycling League gave us a huge hand last week.

Our scrap rate has so far only been about 5%—higher than previous years because of the number of bikes we’re received from the Howard County Alpha Ridge recycling center and the high cost of repair parts, but happily still well below our target.

Our Giveaway Day is December 11. Please help us out by signing up for a shift here: fb4kmaryland.org/volunteer/. We expect that over 100 volunteers will be required throughout the day to give over 1500 children new helmets and bikes. It’s a fun and rewarding day, and not to be missed!