Community Gearing Up to Build Bikes for Kids

http://www.noozhawk.com/noozhawk/article/120108_community_gearing_up_to_build_bikes_for_kids/

By Susan Deacon

Residents plan to spend Saturday assembling nearly 600 bikes just in time for the holidays.

On Saturday, community members will come together at a Goleta home to spend the day building nearly 600 bikes for local children in need. The bikes and helmets will be distributed to local charities to donate to children in time for the holidays.

The bikes were purchased through donations to the nonprofit Kids and Bikes Foundation.

The idea was simple: Get members of the Goleta Valley and Santa Barbara communities to donate money for bicycles. The bikes will be purchased at wholesale cost, assembled by community members and delivered to children who otherwise would go without.

Kids and Bikes is the brainchild of local businessman Lou Ventura. “We believe that everybody remembers his or her first bike, and we want to be part of that memory,” Ventura said.

Since its inception five years ago, the number of bikes built by what started as a group of friends and neighbors has gone from 38 to the nearly 600 that will be put together on Saturday. “We had no idea of the number of request for bicycles we would receive,” Ventura said.

Last year, the group gave 452 bikes to charities including The Unity Shoppe, Transition House, Catholic Charities, The Teddy Bear Foundation, Saint Raphael’s Church, Saint Raphael’s School, The Goleta Boys Club and Project Santa. The group also donated directly to individual families.

Susan Deacon represents the Kids and Bikes Foundation.

http://www.noozhawk.com/noozhawk/article/120108_community_gearing_up_to_build_bikes_for_kids/