1,000 Sewing Machines Donated
María Jesús González González was the recipient of our 1,000th donated sewing machine which we sent to Costa Rica in August. The sewing machine was donated to us from Becky Fritts, a member of Otterbein United Methodist Church.
Doña María Jesús lives in Barrio San Luis, Pérez Zeledón and was on-hand when our partner MiBici unloaded the container in October. This shipment contained our 200,000th bike donated and the 1,000th sewing machine. We are excited to share these milestone with our oldest partner and largest recipient of donated bikes, MiBici, an arm of FINCA Costa Rica.
María Jesús is 79 years old and has worked as a seamstress her whole life. She learned the craft from her mother when she was a young girl. She started by doing small clothing repairs for neighbors and family. Over time she built her business and her reputation is legendary in her community. At 79, she's thrilled to be using a new sewing machine and is especially grateful to the entire team at Bikes for the World and MiBici for choosing her as the recipient of the 1,000th sewing machine.
Cindy Brown delivered the sewing machine to us this summer when she joined us to load the container for Costa Rica. This was her first time participating in a loading and we gave her the honor of placing the sewing machine in the container. Our youngest volunteer, Jonah handed it over to her after overseeing the packing job completed by our newest volunteer Glenn Martin.
Otterbein United Methodist Church donates a majority of the sewing machines we donate annually to our partners. Most of them end up in Costa Rica with the micro finance group who distributes our donated bikes through their program.
To close out 2024, Otterbein connected us with a recent donor, who had more than 200 sewing machines to donate. We picked those up and have them stored in our warehouse for delivery throughout 2025. We have volunteers working now to ensure that the machines are in good working order, or are repairable before we donate them to our partners. We will also be looking to expand partners who will receive these machines since we now have a surplus.
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