Bike drive for communities in West Africa to be held Saturday

The Village Bicycle Project is hoping that Park City can help them reach their goal of 150 bikes, which would finish filling their shipping container that is set to travel east this summer. Photo: Village Bike Project

PARK CITY, Utah — The Village Bicycle Project, which aims to empower communities in West Africa by building bike culture, is holding a bike drive on Saturday, May 7 for 9 am to 1 pm at the Canyons Village Base Parking Lot (by the base of the Cabriolet).

Last year, Park City sent more than 100 bikes to Ghana.

“More importantly than bikes, we teach people how to maintain bikes,” said James May, a board member of the Village Bicycle Project. “We teach people how to ride bikes. We sell bikes so that we build kind of a bike industry, essentially as a tool for academic/professional advancement, for freedom, for recreation.”

The group serves rural communities in Ghana and Sierre Leone, “where roads are pretty rundown,” May said. He said they generally have no access to cars.

“[Park City] is a great place to be doing this. We’re a community that has all these bikes, but we’re also really generous and kind of worldly.” — James May

The Village Bicycle Project is hoping that Park City can help them reach their goal of 150 bikes, which would finish filling their shipping container that is set to travel east this summer.

May emphasized that they will take any part of a kid or adult mountain bike. “Even if it’s like just the frame, or just the wheels… parts, clothes, tires, tubes. All of this stuff really goes into making a bike industry what it is.”