Bikes Not Bombs: 40 Years of Impact
This Giving Tuesday, Bikes Not Bombs is looking back to the work that started it all 40 years ago: sending bikes, not bombs, to partners in the Global South. Our name, our mission, and our current work all link back to the simple yet revolutionary idea that bicycles are vehicles for profound and sustainable social change.
In the summer of 1984, BNB cofounder Carl Kurz traveled to Nicaragua with three bicycles, breaking the U.S. embargo on trade to distribute the bikes to local aid workers during the civil war. Some months later, a larger shipment of 12 bikes were sent, blossoming into a volunteer-powered, grassroots organization that focused on sending bikes to the Global South.
Since 1984, we've shipped 83,564 bicycles to 25 partners in 15 different countries.
At the same time, our work locally in Boston has deepened. Our Bike Shop and Training Center began in 1994, serving as a community hub where Boston youth could have meaningful jobs, while refurbishing and selling the bikes that weren’t suited for our partners abroad.
We continue to provide youth with workforce development through paid jobs, and provide low or no-cost programming in Bike School for youth and adults to learn bike maintenance, mechanics, and safe riding skills.
Connecting our Local and Global Work
Fittingly, this major milestone year coincides with a special opportunity to connect our youth employees with our international work in the form of our first ever Youth Fieldworker Fellowship. Through this initiative, Boston-area youth will gain practical skills and career development opportunities in sustainable international development. Moreover, this program will deepen our partnership with Learn, Work, Develop (LWD) in Rwanda, a bicycle-based social enterprise committed to creating a brighter future for children, youth, and women in the community.
We can’t do this work without your support — help us continue to ship bikes, employ youth in meaningful work, and transform the lives of individuals and their communities — here in Boston and in the Global South. Bikes Not Bombs remains a grassroots organization that carries on its historic work, while embracing opportunities and change for an even greater impact on the target communities we serve. Thanks to your support, we are able to process, store, sort, and distribute thousands of bicycles every year - giving them directly to people in need at home and abroad.
Help us continue to grow this legacy - your support helps sustain our work locally and globally