Since October 2008, Hemant and Sangeeta Chhabra, and Simona Terron, have been on a mission — to collect old bicycles. This mission is not driven by a passion for vintage bicycles or entering the Limca Book of Records, but by the desire to facilitate the access of rural children, many of whom have to walk long distances (seven-ten km), to school.
The trio kick-started The Bicycle Project (TBY) on Diwali last year, and thus far have collected 69 bicycles which have been distributed to underprivileged students of the Marathi medium Sri Binoi Gharde Sajjan Vidyalaya in Alonde, Vikramgarh Taluka (approx. 100 km from Mumbai on the Ahmedabad highway).
Hemant (an entrepreneur) and Sangeeta, a former teacher at Tridha, (a Rudolph Steiner School), and textile design graduate of Nirmala Niketan, Mumbai, are co-founders of The Hideout, an organic, eco-friendly resort run by tribals in Jhadpoli village, Vikramgarh Taluka (pop. 114,254). The resort serves as a base camp for urban children and adults for excursions into villages and the contiguous countryside.
“After bonding with our tribal neighbours over the past 20 years, we want to give back in as many ways as possible. We discovered that children aged six-16 years in neighbouring villages were walking two-seven km daily to get to school. Under the TBY, we collect old bicycles, of little use to owners and rusting in garages and terraces, repair them and gift them to the village kids in Thappar Pada, Wada and Vikramgarh,’ says Chhabra.
Committed to conservation and their cause, TBY is the first of their initiatives in rural Maharashtra. “Soon we will introduce and expose village children to the English language and computer learning to help them enter mainstream education. The plan is to encourage people willing to donate their old PCs and teach village children to use them and improve their English. They will be invited to stay for a month in the village with food and accommodation provided by The Hideout,” says Terron, production editor of Hello! (India) who has lent support to the TBY programme.
So far the trio has repaired donated bikes with their own funds. “We would be happy to receive corporate funding and are in the process of registering ourselves as a trust, so we can give people and organisations the benefit of tax exemptions for donating money to us,” says Sangeeta.
“We have actively used our blog (http://thebicycleproject.blogspot.com) and social networking sites to popularise our project. Our collection centres in Mumbai and Delhi will soon be augmented by centres in Pune and Bangalore,” adds Chhabra.
Harshikaa Udasi (Mumbai)