Community Bike Connection provides hundreds of riders of all ages with safe refurbished bicycles, new helmets, and basic safety education each year.
While biking is at the heart of why many of us love Portland, the cost of purchasing a bike and the lack of support for new riders continues to be a barrier that many residents face. Our methods of delivery may have changed over the years, but providing bikes to people that don’t have access to one has been a central part of our work since 1994.
How We Make The Connection:
We partner with local schools, community organizations, and other non-profits to identify where there are needs and how best to address them. In practice this can look like a big bike giveaway event where dozens of people receive bikes at the same time or on an individualized, case-by-case basis.
Do you still do Holiday Bike Drive?
Instead of one big event where hundreds of kids receive bikes in one day, we spread it out to multiple smaller events throughout the year. We call this effort Community Bike Connection. This has shown to be an extremely positive change for the communities we work with and us as an organization. Some of the benefits from this new model include:
- Meeting people in their own community is an easy way to create a welcoming environment.
- Providing bikes during a time of year when people are likely to ride them.
- Being able to serve adults as well to promote families riding together.
- Having the ability to meet requests for bikes with flexibility rather than making community members wait for a once-a-year event
- Eliminating the need to store hundreds of bikes throughout the year.
Where do the bikes come from?
Bikes provided through Community Bike Connection have been generously donated by people like you, then refurbished by our incredible team of volunteers(also people like you)! It’s a real community effort to make it all happen.
If you’re interested in donating a bike, see our Donating Bikes & Parts page for more information.