See It: The Community being helped

Our mission statement:

"We are a group of cyclists committed to biking cross-country in order to actively engage with a number of diverse communities on the issues of environmental and social justice.

Our mission is to both demonstrate practical techniques for sustainable living and learn from the knowledge and experiences of the people we meet.

Our group is dedicated to improving our world through positive social change by means of community organization. We believe this change will come only when local communities unite to foster respect for the environment and for each other."

We are about a dozen students (some graduating this semester) from Oberlin College in Ohio. We will be biking this summer from Oberlin, OH to San Francisco, CA. We will be stopping at different venues along our route, such as community centers and summer camps, in order to facilitate workshops and engage in dialogue with community members on sustainability-related topics such as energy efficiency, gardening, composting, alternative health, and community organizing. We intend to network with local environmental and progressive organizations for both logistical support and information exchange. We plan to document our trip from artistic and informative angles, and to bring that documentation back to campus in order to share our experiences, to promote the culture of biking at Oberlin College, and to leave useful information for subsequent students hoping to go on similar tours. We plan to use one support vehicle fueled by used cooking oil.

We have a blog!

See It: The Community being helped

My Friend (Derek Dunham) and I have created a Critical Mass of Greensboro Biking event club. This club meets the last friday of every month to bike the streets of greensboro to promote the use of bicycles as an alternative to gas wasting cars. Critical mass bike rides take place all over the world in many major cities such as New York usually on the last friday of every month. Critical Mass' objective is to promote alternative transportation and give cyclists safety in numbers. The first meeting, only 4 people showed up but it was raining really hard, for this month of january, 14 people have signed up and thirty-seven said they might show up.

See It: The Community being helped

The Parkwoods is a residential gated community nestled at the base of the Berkeley Hills. My father has lived here since before I was born, except when it was being rebuilt from a major fire in the hills. When I moved to the Parkwoods with my father, I was thrilled about being able to ride my bike in the beautiful Berkeley Hills. Being only five minutes away from public transportation, I figured I could ride my bike to and from work with no problem. However when I saw how long and dangerous the uphill ride was on the way back, I realized that the prospect of living here and not owning a car is virtually impossible. The community has only several bike storage rooms that cost $60 a year to use. There are no bike racks in the community at all. There is no bus that goes from the Bart station to the Parkwoods. It became clear that this is a community that priviledges one form of transportation, the car. The Parkwoods Bike Club offers an alternative.

The purpose of the Parkwoods Bike Club is to offer support and community to members of the Parkwoods community who have an interest in biking. The Parkwoods Bike Club (PBC hereafter) offers a forum and voice for bikers and people in the community to represent the need for bike safe roads and bike friendly public transportation. The PBC also offers a forum to develop and share biking information to support bikers or potential bikers of all levels. With global warming becoming a greater threat to our environment, the need for alternative forms of transportation has never been greater. The PBC is committed to making biking as a means of everyday transportation safe and possible.