Bicycles mean a lot of things to different people. They can mean good health, great fun, reducing transport emissions, or sightseeing, but for many, especially in other countries, bikes are an essential and affordable way to get around.
The Gift Trust has supported some exciting bicycle projects in New Zealand and around the world and we’d like to take this opportunity to celebrate the remarkable contraption that is ‘The Bike’.
Cambodia Rural Students Trust
One of our donors who gives through her Feminista Fund is a keen cyclist herself and so she jumped at the chance to support rural students in Cambodia to access bicycles, education and more empowered lives.
This incredible youth-led charitable initiative in Siem Reap, Cambodia was the result of an error. Fourteen year old Melbourne girl Stephanie Palti missed the deadline to submit her application for a high school volunteer programme and thereby missed out on her opportunity to volunteer, building houses in Cambodia. Seeing that Steph was deeply disappointed, her family decided to help make her volunteering mission come true. They took the whole family on a trip to Siem Reap for two weeks volunteering and started what would become a family mission.
In 2011 they set up a Non-Governmental Organisation, Cambodia Rural Students Trust (CRST) with the mission of breaking the poverty cycle through education. Being fully accountable and transparent while making lives better for rural students in Cambodia, the organisation started with 22 students. Fast forward to today, and over 100 students are currently being sponsored by CRST. Sponsored students manage and run the organisation, as well as social enterprise projects in a number of fields that include everything from frozen yoghurt to bicycles.
Project B – Bicycles for Education, one of the enterprises within the trust, helps break the poverty cycle by making it easier for students in rural Cambodia to get to school. Children often start school later in life as they need to be strong enough to walk more than an hour to get to school. By providing them with a bike, kids can start school earlier and are more likely to stay in school for longer. The team assesses, repairs and then delivers second-hand bicycles to qualified rural students who need a bike to get to school. They also travel to rural schools several times a year with their Mobile Bike Mechanic programme, repairing bikes for all students in need. In 2024, they repaired 415 bicycles & donated 175 bicycles to rural students.
Up-Cycles Charitable Trust
We came across this excellent project when looking for funding opportunities for cycle projects in the South Island and were delighted when one of our donors decided to support them.
Chris ‘Foggie’ Foggin is the founder of Up-Cycles Charitable Trust in Alexandra, Central Otago. Foggie loves bikes and what he doesn’t know about them isn’t worth knowing. He and his growing team of supporters repair and provide bikes to those in need, distributing them through Oranga Tamariki and charities across the region. The team collects donated bikes and bike parts from local bicycle businesses and repairs them to donate to those in need.
Central Otago is a great place to ride a bike, with millions of dollars coming into the community from cycle tourism, and the team at Up-Cycles are working to make it the best place for bikes on Earth. They teach bike riding safety and skills in schools with their Community of Bike Ambassadors programme and are working to make the riding of bikes accessible to everyone in the community, including those who cannot afford to buy or maintain a bike. They adapt bikes for those with disabilities or diverse learning issues to enable accessibility and mobility. They give bikes into the refugee and migrant community and promote the health and wellbeing associated with bike riding.
Their motto strikes true as they promise to continue their work, ‘Changing Lives One Bike at a Time!’
Phaplu Mountain Bike Club
Phaplu is a small trekking village at the base of Mt. Everest, and like many small working towns, it had a problem with kids not staying in school. But a few years ago, our partners at Move92 (who do their gifting through The Gift Trust), asked a local leader and owner of a Phaplu trekking business (Ang Sherpa Lama) what he would do to remedy the problem. His answer was surprising: build a mountain-biking pump track, and put it right next door to the school.
Why? To give them a compelling incentive to stay in Phaplu and continue their education, to teach mountain biking skills so that village kids would later lead mountain bike trekking tours for tourists, and to sow the seeds of a whole new livelihood in the region with trained mountain biking guides from Phaplu.
It was a wild, crazy, local idea. So Move92 collaborated with The Himalayan Trust and gave Ang a $10,000 grant (via The Gift Trust) to build the pump track, with the only stipulation being that Ang’s proposal had to specifically include girls in the club. The pump track was built using local labour, and immediately became the social centre of the town. And now on a daily basis, 40 to 50 boys AND girls are at the track waiting in line to use it. They must stay in school to be there.
Ang used this momentum to formalise the Phaplu Mountain Biking Club, and to collaborate with businesses in Kathmandu to build quality trails in the region. Thirteen professional grade tracks have now been built. The club will be hosting its second enduro race in the spring, and the tourism bureau of Nepal will soon be making a documentary about Phaplu and its new mountain biking culture. The club has grown to the point that Ang can no longer manage it with his other business responsibilities. So he hired a local woman, Mingma, with his second Move92 grant to continue growing its programs.
Again, what we see modelled in our everyday life makes a huge difference in what all of us believe is possible. And children growing up in Phaplu will see a local woman leading a prominent village organisation, and making her visions a reality.
Thanks to Move92 for this story.
Dunedin Tunnels Trail Trust
In the 1870s NZ Railways built two tunnels in the Dunedin area. Train enthusiasts received a twin track upgrade in the early 1910s, leaving the old tunnels for pedestrians. They were closed by Council in the early 1980s and 2000s respectively while being used for utility pipes. Happily for cyclists and walkers, they’re coming back!
Caversham tunnel is 865 metres long, four metres wide and five metres high, covering 523 metres from east to west. It is built in a gothic arch style and quite frankly looks like somewhere Enid Blyton would have sent the Famous Five for a smashing good adventure!
Chain Hills tunnel was built in 1873. It is an old Victorian styled, single line railway tunnel at the northern end of Gladstone Road North. It is 462 metres long, four metres wide and five metres high.
The Dunedin Tunnels Trail Trust wants to open up the tunnels to walkers, cyclists, scooters, commuters, and tourists to see a special bit of the region’s Victorian heritage. This 15km trail will provide an amenity that can be used by everyone. It offers a flat dedicated walking and cycling route with no vehicular traffic. It connects the fast growing town of Mosgiel to Dunedin city centre, while passing through and close to suburbs where many potential users of the trail live, such as Fairfield, Abbotsford and Green Island.
The project is currently seeking funding to continue with this ambitious and exciting project. And did one of our donors decide to fund it? In the words of the Famous Five, Rather!
Wainuiomata Trail Project
One of the most prominent features of the Wellington suburb of Wainuiomata is the forested hills that surround it. If you’re lucky you might catch a glimpse of colour moving fast among the trees and know that you’re seeing one of those rare and hardy creatures: the mountain bikers built by the Wainuiomata Trail Project.
When one of our donors asked us to help them support the Wainuiomata Trail Project we took a stroll through their website and admired the beautiful photographs of forested trails. What a wonderful opportunity it is for children to grow up with an appreciation of these forests and to teach them a passion for restoring them and keeping them safe. It’s also exciting to see children learning the skills of mountain biking, the fastest and most active way to see the many trails around the country.
While volunteers play a major part in creating the trails for this project, funding is required for a range of purposes. Over 30 kilometres of tracks have been developed in the past 18 years and contractors and diggers are needed to maintain them. Weather and popularity cause degradation of the trails and upkeep is a constant need.
Happy trails, Wainuiomata.
Photo by Elliot Blyth on Unsplash
