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It’s 7 p.m. on a school night, and senior Divya Reddy is still in the science office at the prestigious Wheatley School, in Old Westbury. Reddy is helping to coordinate bicycle donations for poverty-stricken Africans—many of whom barely have enough money to eat, much less to afford basic transportation.
Reddy, 17, was a freshman in 2004 the last time she and a group of students, led by biology and environmental science teacher Steve Finkelstein, put the Wheatley School Afri-Bike program into action, collecting 400 bikes for people in Kopeyia, Ghana. This year, they’re shooting to send 800. Finkelstein, whose interest in sending bikes to Africa dates back to the 1970s, first got the program started in 2000, when he personally delivered 200 bikes. While there, he conducted a workshop for 31 teachers and gave each of them a bike.
The Wheatley program is done in cooperation with the not-for-profit Village Bike Project, whose director, David Peckham, spends a good deal of time in Ghana and is able to navigate the daunting customs process in Africa. Peckham initially gave the bikes away, but now sells them cheaply, giving further discounts to people who take a day-long bike-maintenance course. It’s like that old saying: “Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he eats forever,” contends Finkelstein.
Finkelstein said that rather than simply sending footballs over to Africa, as some kids at Wheatley have suggested over the years, bikes are important because Ghanaians spend as much as 50 percent of their wages—about $1 a day—to get to and from work. Plus, bikes are environmentally friendly and easier to repair and maintain than cars.
“It really makes sense in a developing nation,” Finkelstein explains. Besides, he says, donors are able to get rid of what some might consider trash, while people in Ghana see them as treasure. “I try to teach my students that everything we do has an impact on the planet and try to get people to understand they are connected to the rest of the universe,” he continues.
Leading up to big collection days, between March 14 and April 11, Reddy and team get the word out by e-mailing all their contacts, posting fliers at the school, and by speaking at public meetings in Westbury, Old Westbury, Mineola, and East Williston. Some students in the group have convinced parents to store donated bikes in their homes before the bikes are shipped to Kopeyia on April 13. The bikes will be packed into two 40-foot shipping containers and sent at a cost of about $12,000.
In addition to bikes, the Wheatley School Afri-Bike accepts bike parts and medical and school supplies, as well as monetary donations. Reddy says that based on her group’s efforts, at least three other schools in the area are looking to start similar programs. “We try to get people to be as passionate as we are” she says about the project.
For more information about donating, email dreddy1313@gmail.com
