e X.

BICYCLE PROJECT

on republic day 2009, when mala, a nine year old tribal girl, heard her
name called out in the school assembly, she was in for a surprise. the
principal announced that she along with another sixty seven students
belonging to sir binoi gharde vidyalaya in alone, vikramgarh taluka
were being gifted bicycles to help them commute from home to school
and back. it was a reward for having kept regular attendance and
having passed their mid-term exams. for mala and friends, this was big
news indeed.

until now the children had been used to walking anywhere between
two to seven kilometres one way to get to school because their parents
were too poor to afford even the nominal bus fare. some children who
walked were as young as six years of age. these children wanted to go
to school, because they understood that an education would lead them
into a brighter future, a better life. but this meant a long hard walk in
sometimes scorching sun and lesser time at home, lesser time to rest,
lesser time to play. but with the arrival of these brightly painted
bicycles, all that would now change.

so where did these bicycles come from? how did a poorly funded public
school in a tribal village on the outskirts of mumbai manage to gift its
students this lavish gift? the answer lay in the three smiling faces that
stood at the sidelines of the assembly. the three faces were that of
businessman hemant chhabra, his wife sangeeta, and their journalist
friend simona terron.

hemant who runs an organic farm and resort in the tribal hamlet, first
noticed the children walking and thought of all the bicycles he had
seen lying unused in the building garages in mumbai city. what if those
cycles could be repaired, spruced up and given to these kids? a
discussion with sangeeta and simona led to an enthusiastic response.

a collection centre was set up in hemant’s building where sixty eight

bicycles were collected. the bikes were checked and repaired. a bicycle
painting contest was organized for kids in mumbai city, where the
children helped spray paint the bicycles in bright attractive shades. the
cycles were then transported by road to the tribal school in time for
republic day celebrations, where mala and her friends received them.

this was the beginning of ‘the bicycle project’. an initiative to collect

unused bicycles from big cities and use them to better the lives of
poor tribal kids. the idea caught on and spread. the bicycle project now
has collection centres in mumbai, delhi and pune. its a model that can
work in any city. for on the outskirts of every big city there are similar
tribal villages.

bangalore outskirts too have lambani tribal villages like these. and the
story of these children is no different from mala’s story. they are bright
kids, willing to work hard to invent a better future for themselves. now
imagine if we could do in bangalore what hemant, sangeeta and
simona are doing in mumbai... imagine what a difference we might
make?