Black Friday savings could transform lives, says charity

‘A simple bicycle can change everything’

While in the UK some of us enjoy the luxury of replacing our existing bikes with faster, lighter models, and upgrading parts to shave minutes and seconds off our rides, for some remote communities around the world a bicycle could take hours off each day’s journey, with the potential to change lives.

As an antidote to the consumerism that marks the start of the festive season, World Bicycle Relief is asking those who benefit from cut price Black Friday deals to donate the difference to help mobilise communities through the power of bicycles, ahead of “Giving Tuesday”, on 1 December.

WBR has produced a video demonstrating the transformation its sturdy Buffalo Bicycles have on rural Palabana village residents in Zambia, who are able to transport themselves, and the raw material for their businesses, faster and more efficiently by bike.

FK Day, founder and president of World Bicycle Relief, says: “The community of Palabana has reached a critical mass of bicycles and is now empowering itself with new access to mobility. Farmers transport milk to market, craftsmen build their business, and healthcare workers visit more patients. And students no longer spend all their time and energy walking long distances to school with the risk of dropping out.”

“By providing rugged, reliable transportation, we can help more students, more families and more communities like Palabana thrive. Together, we can help build sustainable change and long-term independent communities like Palabana through The Power of Bicycles.”

World Bicycle Relief was founded in 2005 to help mobilise people and promote local economies in developing countries. It manufactures, designs and distributes Buffalo Bikes to withstand rugged terrain in rural areas where decent roads are lacking.

Bikes are assembled locally, and to date World Bicycle Relief has trained more than 1,000 field mechanics and delivered more than 270,000 bicycles.

Giving Tuesday started in the USA in 2012 as an antidote to the start of the Christmas shopping season, marked each year by Black Friday. 

You can donate to World Bicycle Relief here.