WHAT:
- Provide bicycles for girls to ride to school in order to overcome the barrier of long distances from villages to schools.
- Teach girls how to maintain and repair bicycles, a marketable skill.
|
 |
| Photo: Village Bicycle Project |
|
|
 |
| Photo: Village Bicycle Project |
|
| WHY:
- One of the main barriers to sending girls to school in The Gambia is the long distances the girls must walk from their homes to the schools. Long travel times take away from the time needed to do household chores.
- Traditionally, many income-generating skills are not available to girls in The Gambia. Among these out-of-reach skills is bicycle maintenance and repair. The Girls' Bicycle Project will teach the girls how to maintain and repair bicycles, thus allowing them to learn a technical skill while also attending school.
|
HOW:
-
The Abundance Fund is supporting The Jole Rider Foundation (JRF), a Gambian nonprofit organization that will rent bicycles
to the families of 75 girls who walk long distances to schools in three
regions of the Gambia for one year.
-
Additionally, the JRF will train the girls to be bicycle engineers.
-
Each school will appoint 4 girl students to form a "bicycle engineering department," responsible for making sure all the girls'
bicycles are in working order and the JRF will award an annual prize each year
to the student making the greatest progress. Each school's bicycle
engineering department will produce two yearly reports on the status of each
JRF bicycle.
|
 |
| Photo: Tom LeCarner |
|
|
-
In each of the
partner schools, a committee will be
appointed by the school for management purposes. The committee will include the School
Principal, JRF Technical Director, and the chairperson of the school's Parent Teacher Association. The
committee will also include a representative of the girls' engineering
team. The committee will supply progress reports to Jole Rider
Foundation, including the engineering reports produced
each term.
-
At the
beginning of the second term, the JRT Technical
Director will visit each of the partner schools to assess the number of girls
traveling to school from satellite villages as well as the status of the bicycles.
|
|