This past weekend, city of Charlotte employees and volunteers built 75 bikes for students in economically challenged neighborhoods.
Inside a garage in northeast Charlotte, city employees and their families adjusted frames, drilled screws and slotted wheels to assemble the bikes. The annual Bike Build is a partnership with Right Moves for Youth, a local support and development program. Almost 80% of the children in Right Moves for Youth are African American, and the rest are mostly Latino.
Ryan Grammatico, the group’s community engagement director, said the bikes will help children with limited transportation navigate a car-dependent city where not every family can afford a car.
“It does give them the opportunity. They can go to a job; they can go to a sporting event they couldn’t go to before,” Grammatico said. “They have to get to practice, they have to go to school sometimes and live right around the corner, but instead of walking that full half-mile, they have a chance to have a bike that gets them there.”
Since 2008, the City of Charlotte, Right Moves for Youth, and The Spokes Group, a group that provides underprivileged children access to bikes, have assembled more than 1,300 bicycles for middle school and high school students in low-income communities in Mecklenburg County.
Grammatico says the Bike Build offers underserved students the opportunity to have the same backing as their peers.
“It’s not just equality, it’s equity; it means they have an investment the same, and they can be looked at the same as their friends who have something they don’t have,” Grammatico said. “This kind of levels the playing field for them; it allows them a chance they didn’t have before. That opportunity really changes the trajectory for that student.”
Right Moves for Youth plans to distribute the 75 bikes across the city this week.
