When Mohammad Wasiq moved from Kabul, Afghanistan, to Savannah with his wife and daughter four months ago, it took him nearly half an hour to walk to his job at a hotel every day.
Now, thanks to a new partnership between Lutheran Services of Georgia, which helps refugees, and the Savannah Bicycle Campaign, Wasiq has a newly refurbished black bike to get to his job at the Marriott, which cuts his commute by more than half.
“I use it every day,” he said. “When we moved here, we didn’t know any of the streets, and it’s helped us learn the names of streets and places.”
Wasiq is one of a handful of people the New Standard Cycles program has helped since it was launched a few months ago.
The goal, according to Savannah Bicycle Campaign Executive Director John Bennett, is to provide bikes to people who need safe and affordable transportation to get to work, school, doctor’s appointments and other places.
“We want to make it safer and more convenient for people who are not elective cyclists but who use bikes as their primary transportation,” he said.
Max Youngblood, an employment specialist with Lutheran Services, said finding jobs for his refugee clients is only one piece of their resettlement. He said giving people like Wasiq a bicycle affords him far better chance to integrate into the community.
“A bicycle, for my clients, is a huge sense of freedom,” he said. “It reduces their commutes to work by, often times, an hour … and really it’s just a bigger part of them kind
of embracing America and letting it start to become their home.”
In addition to its partnership with Lutheran Services, Savannah Bicycle Campaign also joined forces with Mahogany Bowers, founder of local nonprofit Blessings in a Book Bag. This past Christmas, the organization fixed 26 donated kids’ bikes to give to under-served children.
“A lot of these kids don’t have transport back and forth, whether they’re going to a rec center or visiting family members,” Bowers said. “I think we also opened up the eyes of the parents through the children to say, ‘Hey, this is another form of transportation that you may want to look at.’”
The Savannah Bicycle Campaign recently relocated to its new headquarters at 1301 Lincoln St., a space built out and renovated with the help of the Metropolitan Savannah Rotary Club, who selected the cycling nonprofit as its annual service partner.
New Standard Cycles is not a bike co-op or repair shop, but they do plan to offer services to lower-income populations throughout the community using a new mobile bike repair station. Jen Colestock, Savannah Bicycle Campaign’s program manager, also runs a free monthly class to teach people basic repair and maintenance.
“It’s surprising how much transportation can cost for an average family here in Savannah,” she said. “The median income is only around $25,000 a year and the cost of owning a car can be almost $9,000 on average.”
She said she’s often seen people who use bikes by necessity riding around on rickety cruisers because they could not afford to make repairs to their wheels or brakes, which can be dangerous.
“A lot of times people will have bikes passed off or given to them and they don’t have a budget to maintain it,” she said. “So we’ll go to those areas where there’s an emergency repair and get them going.”
Bennett said the nonprofit is open to forming more partnerships with other workforce development organizations to identify people who need bicycles to get to work.
In addition to the bike, Savannah Bicycle Campaign also provides its recipients with helmets, lights, bike locks and safe-cycling instruction.
THE SESSIONS
New Standard Cycles volunteer sessions happen from 7-9:30 p.m. each Wednesday and Thursday at 1301 Lincoln St. To volunteer or schedule a bike donation, contact Jen Colestock at jen@bicyclecampaign.org. To learn more about Savannah Bicycle Campaign, visit bicyclecampaign.org.