New Canaan resident, Thatcher Findlay, and his cousin Brooke Findlay, of Sudbury, MA, will be collecting used bicycles and bicycle parts from 1-4 p.m. Sunday, August 6 at 708 Ponus Ridge Rd, New Canaan, as well as throughout the rest of summer and fall, as part of their on-going Bicycles for Humanity Boston (“B4H-Boston”) charitable campaign. This will be the fourth year the teens, along with older siblings, Whit and Reed Findlay, also of Sudbury, MA, have organized collections in the New England area.
“When we get enough bikes to fill a shipping container,” explained Thatcher, a seventh grader at New Canaan Country School, “we load them in and they are transported to Botswana where they are distributed by local, community-based organizations to the people who need them.”
The mobility a bicycle provides allows people in the underserved community to travel greater distances in a shorter length of time and transport much more weight. Mothers can carry containers of water back to their village in a fraction of the time walking requires. Students can get to and from school faster. Parents can transport more items to market to sell. Healthcare workers are able to be 3 to 4 times more productive. “The container itself is re-purposed into a community bicycle repair and workshop called a Bicycle Empowerment Centre.”
The Findlay’s first B4H-Boston container was delivered in 2016 to Ramotswa, Botswana, and held nearly 500 bicycles which were distributed throughout the region including at the Lesilakgokong village and Kubung primary school to help local kids get to and from school. The next container will also hold 500 bicycles and is scheduled to be shipped to Botswana in September. Bicycles collected after that date will be held for the next shipment.
“We fix the bikes and then store them until it’s time to ship,” continued Thatcher, “We take broken bikes, parts, bikes with missing parts - we make them work again. It doesn’t matter to us at all what condition the bike is in. If it’s really old, we break it down for parts. We’ll take anything bike-related including helmets and tools.”
Reed, a senior at Philips Academy Andover, offered insight into adjustments they made to their program since its inception. “After we dropped off our first container, we decided to expand our original plan to include a dedicated school bike program, where the bikes, like textbooks, stay with the school and as kids get bigger, they move up a size - allowing students to reduce their daily commute time.
While the two older Findlays are away at school, Brooke, a sophomore at Lincoln-Sudbury High School and Thatcher have stepped up their bike collection duties, scheduling pick-up and drop-off opportunities in towns throughout southern Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire.
The location for the August 5 bike (and bike part) collection is 708 Ponus Ridge Rd, New Canaan in the area marked Bikes for Humanity-Boston (“B4H-Boston”), near the red barn. B4H-Boston can also come to you; to schedule a local pick-up of a new, used or broken bike, or bike parts, please contact Thatcher Findlay at b4hboston@gmail.com or (203) 801-5693.
Bikes for Humanity-Boston is a registered 501(c)3 tax exempt charitable organization and any donated funds are deductible as well as the value of donated bikes. Donors who wish to claim a value deduction can do so on their tax form. For more information about the program, to download a receipt which may be used for tax purposes, or to see photos and videos of earlier bike collection events as well as the 2016 delivery of bikes to Lesilakgokong village and Kubung primary school in Botswana, please visit www.b4h-boston.org. 100% of all donations are used to get bikes into the hands of those who need them.