On Wednesday, November 15th, Bike U had its first session of our season. Our guest was Christian Castillo, who is the Warehouse Operations Manager for Free Bikes 4 Kidz (FB4k’s) in the Twin Cities. Some of you may remember Christian from last year’s annual banquet, where he took the time to meet and chat with many of us and had a chance to talk briefly about FB4k’s.
During the Bike U session, he gave a bit of the history of FB4k’s and explained their mission – basically to repurpose the thousands of bikes kids grow out of every year and get them into the hands of kids that don’t have a bike and would love to get one. Christian also discussed how FB4k’s rounds up the bikes and gets them ready through a process of cleaning, prepping, and wrenching before they go through “quality control” and are deemed suitable for riding.
TCBC and other organizations put in thousands of volunteer hours taking on these volunteer roles and can also assist in the bike giveaways where kids’ eyes light up as they select and try out their bikes. It was an enlightening session and will, hopefully, motivate our TCBC membership to get involved in one more way to share their passion for biking with others.
Thanks to John Benda for this wrap-up of the session.
Please follow the link below to the Zoom recording of the session on the TCBC YouTube Channel:
