Youth en Route hosts Bike Festival with Calgary Housing Community

Youth en Route was in Templemont this week to put on a bike festival! We worked with the social workers that support the residents of the Calgary Housing community to make it happen.

YER empowers youth to be autonomous, healthy, and socially connected by giving them the ability to choose active transportation. That’s why we really wanted to provide more kids with access to a bike, helmet, and lock.

Bike giveaway

The turnout was incredible! We had originally planned for just 11 kids to receive bikes, but with a full crowd of families, we were able to give away 19 bikes! Our education assistant Kauther took on the role of organizing the event for us and did a great job. We also had Kazzy there to help, a leading member of our Youth Advisory Council.

Many kids arrived on their own bikes and were able to get properly fitted for a helmet, received a lock, and got their bikes tuned up and washed. We shared the best ways to lock bikes to prevent theft, and gave away bike path maps and our information booklet for new riders! All the bikes we gave away came registered on Bike Index and we easily transferred the ownership to the new families, giving them a bit of an overview of how bike registration works. Many kids had bikes that were stolen. We are hoping this will help.

With a park right next door, the kids also got to test out their cycling skills and enjoy the warm weather.

A successful day

Overall it was a successful day, and we hope to do more events like this in the future to get more kids cycling. The demand for good used or low cost bikes is really high in many communities.