Featured Volunteer: Samantha

Samantha completed her Bat Mitzvah project with Bikes for the World last month. And we don't have to tell you how successful it was, you can see it for yourself! Samantha contacted us months ago to set this up and worked in her community to secure a location, which took a little pre planning and working out dates and details.

She then came to the warehouse with her family to learn more about Bikes for the World and how our volunteers work to have successful collections. Samantha tried compacting some bikes on her own so she would know exactly how to train her volunteers joining her to execute this event in April.

Samantha chose BfW because she likes bikes and wanted to use her mitzvah project to make a difference in the world. By collecting bikes in her community she was able to help locally by using Earth Month to promote recycling and reuse and divert bikes from hitting the local waste stream. She also employed a great team of student volunteers who learned more about volunteerism and the impact they could make internationally through this project. 

And of course, she was also able to add 85 bikes to our shipment heading to Learn Work Develop in Rwanda. The bikes she collected at her event are now currently on their way to Rwanda where they will go into a program specifically working to support and empower young women not much older than Samantha. She also did a great job of fundraising for the event and nearly reached our goal of raising $10 for every bike donated. 

Working with youth collection managers can sometimes be a challenge but working with Samantha was a pure delight. She was very quick to answer an email and thorough in her research and planning. They worked as a family to create unique and creative signs to help advertise the event in her community, and they were ambitious to collect bikes in advance and deliver them on the day of the event. Everything added together turned out a very successful and impactful project!