Paul Harris Fellow Award

Last month the Rotary Club of Carroll Creek honored Bikes for the World leaders Keith Oberg, Taylor Jones, and Yvette Hess as Paul Harris Fellows, in recognition of their humanitarian leadership and service in "doing good in the world".

The Paul Harris Fellow Award is named for the founder of Rotary International. A $1,000 contribution to the The Rotary Foundation has been made in each of their names.

In recognizing their visionary leadership and dedicated service, the Rotary Club paid tribute to Keith, Taylor and Yvette, whose passion for the mission of Bikes for the World has improved the lives of over half a million individuals in developing regions of the globe. 

Thank you to RCCC for this recognition. There aren't enough words to describe the impact that RCCC has had on our program. I know I speak for all of our partner programs when I say that we absolutely could not succeed in our mission without the material and financial support of RCCC and that the efficacy and impact of those international programs are very much reflective of the inputs that RCCC has made to BfW over the past 15 plus years.

Taylor Jones, Executive Director BfW

Bikes for the World cannot succeed in our mission without significant community support and RCCC is one of the biggest and best advocates for the work we do. The RCCC's efforts are foundational and allow us to do more and better work on behalf of the local community and for our partners overseas.  Having such phenomenal support allows us to ramp up our support of all of our partners around the world and deepens the impact of those programs in the communities where they are based. 

RCCC has been a consistent and reliable partner of BfW since we officially formed in 2005. In that time the Rotarians have maintained their commitment to our program by recruiting new bike project managers, volunteers, and community partners on a regular basis. They continue to work with schools, organizations and businesses within the community to help grow their efforts year after year. They have moved from a one day collection to collecting bikes 365 days a year by also establishing a storage facility that can hold more bikes than our warehouse! This has helped us ship containers year round and allowed us to better monitor the types of bikes that go to certain partners. 

RCCC has also helped us load several containers including one 'live' load that happened during their collection event in Frederick several years ago. Working alongside a Rotary Club in South Africa, RCCC also helped establish a new partner for BfW in South Africa, which some Rotarians from their club will visit this fall. With the bikes the RCCC is currently holding in storage for us, they have now collected and donated over 6,000 bicycles to our program throughout the years. We humbly accept this award from the RCCC, and it's been a true honor to work with this amazing crew of individuals who consistently puts service over self.