Bike workshops (we all say it enough) create social bonds, are an area of socialisation, a place of solidarity...the two wokshops presented underneath have decided to express this trait in their very own way…

The Bike Project

The Bike Project is a “community of refugees, mechanics and volunteers” located in South London. It aims at providing bikes to refugees and asylum seekers.

A study showed that 71% of London inhabitants from ethnic minorities’ backgrounds state to never have cycled. For the women, only 28% have ever riden a bicycle. That is why The Bike Project fights to change practice and mentalities, as some of the communities don’t consider biking as a mean of transport. The project fights also for social equity.

The workshop gets donated bikes, repair them and distribute them around. Along the week the mechanics do the biggest part of the reparation work ; during the public session they accompany volunteers and refugees for the smaller reparations : one session on Thursdays (for those who haven’t got a bike), and one session on Fridays (for those who already own a bike). Everybody is welcome to these sessions to repair a bicycle, which will then be given to one person. It’s also an opportunity to meet, exchange...the aim being to help one another.

The Bike Project also organise sessions to teach migrant women how to ride a bicycle, in a women-only environment. A bicycle is loaned during the sessions, which will be given away at the end of the 10-weekly sessions.

Alongside those activities the workshop also offers an on-site reparation service : it goes to a place of business, its employees getting their bike repaired on a same-day basis. All profits go to the charity-side of the project.

La Ciclofficina Sociale

La Ciclofficina Sociale, located in Milan in Italy, is a bike workshop with a social twist, as its noun indicates. It is indeed particularly designed for youth who have psychological troubles, or a handicap, or who are of foreign origin...more generally for people who have difficulties finding their place in society.
This workshop is conceived as an educational laboratory in which bike mechanics supports socialisation and professionnal integration for underprivileged people.
The bicycle is seen as a metaphore for life : on a bicycle as in life, there are ups and downs, sometimes it’s difficult, sometimes you don’t even have to pedal..
The bike is used as a tool for social integration, a tool for training, and helps in getting relationships going.
When we look after a bike, repair it, it’s also “a bit ourselves that we tend to”..
The project aims for the autonomy of people through acquiring knowledges and self-confidence.

This rationale is put in practice through several specific objectives :
 Putting in place a protective educational frame outside the family context, with childcare workers, to help socialisation
 Helping to gain skills and develop coginitive logical capacities through practising bike mechanics
 Developing networking and exchanges with local authorities
 Promote bicycle culture and the values it conveys
 Promote education to a lifestyle respectful of the environment, by putting forward the ideas of valorisation and sustainable mobility

La Ciclofficina Sociale, as most of the bike workshops, is also open to anybody, although keeping a particular attention to underprivileged youth. As in most of the workshops, old bicycles get repaired and get a new life, and as in most of the workshops, there is need for parts, bicycles and volunteers…

Article préparé par Delphine, de Récup’R, Bordeaux