“Thank You” from Trip for Kids Denver/Boulder for your help getting 12 kids on Bikes!
Posted April 3, 2015
In February, Keller Bros. Auto Repair was honored to support Trip for Kids Denver/Boulder as our featured charity for Hump Day is Help Day. For the entire month, $5 from every oil change performed on a Wednesday or Thursday was donated to the group – with great results! Thanks to your help, we were able to raise $120 to help get 12 kids on a bicycle through their program.
Leslie Harris, from Trip for Kids Denver/Boulder, shares more about their program and the support we were able to provide with the help of you and our community in Littleton in the rest of this post:
“All of us at Trips for Kids Denver/Boulder extend a heartfelt thank you to Keller Bros. Auto and their Hump Day is Help Day donation which will allow a dozen youth to explore the Front Range on the seat of a mountain bike! Why do we want to get kids on bikes? Well…
Today, about one in three American kids and teens is overweight or obese and for the first time ever, the current generation of children may have shorter life expectancies than their parents. Simultaneously, youth today are spending significantly less time outdoors and are being diagnosed with an array of budding behavioral problems leading experts to coin a new term: “nature deficit disorder”. While this research is staggering, we don’t need research to tell us that more frequent physical activity in the outdoors can be a remedy to these problems. At Trips for Kids Denver/Boulder we care about the future of our youth and believe that the simple act of riding a bicycle – to school, to a friend’s house, or around the neighborhood – can dramatically improve the lives of youth today.
Unfortunately, in lower-income communities, there are a multitude of barriers that prevent the sustained riding of a bicycle – whether it be the initial costs, the skills or money to maintain or fix a bicycle or access to safe places to ride. Trips for Kids Denver/Boulder’s three programs – Ride Program, Earn-A-Bike and Lucky Bikes Re-Cyclery – are dedicated to targeting these barriers in order to get more urban, under-resourced youth outside and getting physically active by riding bikes – well into adulthood.
Our signature program, the Ride Program offers introductory mountain biking experiences to under-served youth that would otherwise not afford the experience. Partnering with numerous youth agencies in the Denver and Boulder area, TFKD/B provides fun-filled, daylong mountain bike outings for small groups of children aged 10 and up. The Earn-a-Bike Program takes place over the course of 6-12 sessions and provides youth participants opportunities to learn fundamental bike maintenance skills, while earning/getting to keep their bicycles.
In addition to our youth programs, Trips for Kids Denver/Boulder operates our own mission driven, community bike shop, Lucky Bikes Re-Cyclery. This venture is allowing TFKD/B to connect children, youth and families to affordable bicycle solutions that keep the whole family rolling.
We began in 2004 with a couple of volunteers and a smattering of donated bikes. That year we served just 116 youth. In 2014, after setting a stretch goal of reaching 2000 youth, we were able to reach a record breaking 2,400 in one year! Over 11,000 youth have benefited from our ten years of programs. The youth who have experienced our programming are now more confident, safe and consistent bicyclists and have developing self-confidence, an appreciation of the natural environment, and an increased awareness of how bicycling is a healthy lifestyle choice.
According to the 2011 American Bicyclist Study, the number of children who ride bicycles declined by more than 20% between 2000 and 2010. Supporting Trips for Kids Denver/Boulder allows us to continue to reach more than 2,500 diverse youth annually through our barrier-busting bicycle programs. This means more adolescents in the Denver/Boulder area, Harvey Park/Mar Lee neighborhoods and youth from partnering agencies such as cityWILD, Denver School of Science and Technology, and Savio House will all be given an opportunity they may have not otherwise had – the joy of riding a bicycle.
All of us at Trips for Kids Denver/Boulder extend a heartfelt thank you to Keller Bros. Auto and their Hump Day is Help Day donation which will allow a dozen youth to explore the Front Range on the seat of a mountain bike!”
Thank you, Leslie! We are proud to support this organization in our community.
Learn more about Hump Day is Help Day – and to see how you can help or schedule your oil change, call our team at 303-347-1010.
Categories: Hump Day is Help Day
Tags: , community involvement, giving back, giving back to the community