We are so excited by the opportunity.
Leader
Emily Piccone
Location
250 Hooper Street Brooklyn, NY 11211
It all started with a few bikes, safety classes in the gym, and 2 mile rides down the closest bike path to school. Nearly all the students were getting on a bike for the first time; helmets were uncomfortable, gears daunting and the New York City streets as scary as real life frogger. Our students stuck through challenging beginnings, and soon our rides became longer, and students started talking about the effects. The whole bike club, especially the facilitators, began to notice a marked drop in the stress of the school day when a ride was over. We hope to continue rides this Spring, build ridership and continue the conversation in Seattle.
HELP THE EL PUENTE BIKE CLUB GET TO SEATTLE!!!
In February, the Bike Club at El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice is hoping to travel all the way to Seattle, Washington to attend the 5th annual Youth Bike Summit, a gathering of young people, educators, bike activists, policymakers and more to lead and attend workshops centered around bicycling. El Puente has been chosen to lead a workshop on the research that they have been conducting in the past year linking bicycling with stress reduction amongst NYC youth. The students of the bike club are in the midst of analyzing survey data from the entire population at El Puente, and they hope to bring the survey to other schools before the summit in February.
We are determined to make it to the 5th Annual Youth Bike Summit, and have already kicked off our fundraising efforts! To start with, Recycle-A-Bicycle of New York has been amazingly helpful with Silent Auctions and refurbished bike sales. Now we are asking our friends and family to contribute anything they can to help cover our travel and lodging costs.
We started the Bike Club at El Puente because we love to ride. We love the feeling of hopping on our bike after a long, hard day of work and gliding home, not a metrocard or car key in sight. We know that our students can love and appreciate this liberation too, and in the past few years we have seen the changes that the confidence to ride a bike can bring to a person. We all know that biking is the cleanest, greenest alternative to transportation, and we're not going to sing that song right now. What we are most excited about is the effects of riding on a personal level, from building physical strength to relieving built-up stress, it’s all good!
“There is beauty in silence and there is silence in beauty and you can find both in a bicycle!”