Refugee Council Cycling Project

Still saddle sore but less scared

Since the last blog I’ve become a keen, if still a bit rubbish, cyclist and have cycled to work every day for the past two weeks! I’m so proud of myself that I have to mention cycling in every conversation I have. I am in no way a natural cyclist and am finding it a real challenge but I think it is good to overcome your fears. I have conquered my biggest fear – the big hill at the start or end of my route to work. Needless to say when I cycle up I could easily be overtaken by pedestrians – no seriously I’m that slow, but it does feel like an immense achievement which is rewarded by near panic as I whizz down the hill with my hands hovering on the brakes.

On Saturday Brigit very kindly gave me a control skills cycle lesson in Dulwich Park.  I’m now fairly confident with emergency stops which may come in handy as I can’t quite look over my left shoulder without severe wobbling and swerving. Brigit also explained the wonders of gears which is making cycling slightly easier although in experimenting with gears this morning I had the horror of the chain coming off. I must pack some wet wipes in future as I managed to get grease all over my hands and face.

I am actually starting to enjoy cycling and am trying hard not to be put off by the bad weather – although I got absolutely soaked on Friday lunchtime that I had to dry my clothes under the hand dryer – thank goodness I have a complete change of outfit for work.  I still need to work on speed and stamina for freewheel and the cycle trips, not to mention my beetroot like face. The maintenance classes are coming to an end as the bikes are nearly finished. It is just so great to see how excited everyone is about being able to get out and ride.  Freewheel will be brilliant, I just hope I can keep up!

Vanessa

Opening up London

When I first heard about this project, I was very excited as I begun to have images of me riding around London, visiting the spots I have only dreamt about in the past. As we begun to work on the bikes, I realised that even though I had a bike in my home country, I had no idea how to repair one but was looking forward to working on one which I could take home in a few weeks. From the first workshop we all worked together as a team, helping each other and encouraging those with less knowledge. For one time I could forget about my asylum claim. I am sure the other boys feel like this too. Everyone on the project takes me for who I am. The volunteers do not treat me as an asylum seeker and the other boys show the same level of respect as we get to know each other on a different level. When we have the bikes to take home I will be able to ride to college and start to look after my health a bit more, something which I haven’t done since I have been here. I want to go to the countryside, to the seaside, I can’t wait!

Muhammad Ahmad

Saddle sore and slightly scared

I was really excited to get involved in the cycling project as I can see it is brilliant for the separated children and once they all have bikes it will give them a great sense of freedom and an opportunity to see so much more of London. However I was also really scared, being involved in this project means I will have to go on cycle trips and until last week I hadn’t ridden a bike for 15 years! All my friends reassured me that it was “just like riding a bike” and there was nothing to be scared of, I meanwhile thought seriously about investing in some adult sized stabilisers. At the start of the project I had a quick go on some of the bikes in the safety of the garage and although I felt like I was going very fast, I wasn’t, and was a bit wobbly it wasn’t too bad.

As the project developed it was clear that I would need to start riding properly, so last Wednesday I made the bold move of trying to cycle home – only 4 miles away. I enlisted the help of a friend to guide me on the road which was a good job for after 2 minutes of being over taken by buses, cars and hitting busy Brixton high street I thought I was going to throw up and had to revert to pushing on the pavement. Still, once the madness of the high street subsided we got back on our bikes and carried on home – I made it all the way to the hill before I had to get off again and push. Since then I have been for a couple more bike rides and have even been cycling to work this week. I still find speed, hills and traffic a problem but am getting slowly better and more confident, although my legs are covered in bruises. I really hope I will be good enough for freewheel in September. Brigit, one of our instructor volunteers, has kindly offered to use her newly learnt skills and give me a private lesson in the park. I’m really hoping she explains gears as they are proving a bit of a mystery to me. Also, if anyone has any tips on how not to get a bright red face I’d be more than happy to hear them.

Vanessa

Vanessa is the Volunteer Development Officer at the Refugee Council and is co-organising this project.

Getting into gear

The cycle workshops are really taking off with both the separated children and volunteers showing loads of enthusiasm. I am very impressed how much all the young people already know about bikes and how adept they are at stripping them down. We seem to get from a complete, albeit slightly broken, bike to a frame and a pile of parts in no time at all. Clients are working together on the bikes, particularly when removing parts needs a bit of force. The volunteers are on hand showing people how to do the slightly trickier bits and also getting stuck in themselves. We’ve stripped down about 6 bikes so far, some of which we’ll build back up and some just for practice and parts. On Wednesday we completed our first bike! What started off as a slightly broken bike has been stripped down, cleaned, repaired and put back together and is ready to go. Soon we hope to have more bikes ready so we can start the next bit of the project – safe cycling and road awareness.

Next month we hope to start cycle lessons. Although all the young people taking part have ridden bikes before not many have ridden on the mean streets of London so we will be running cycle safety and road awareness classes. At the moment two of our volunteers are learning how to be qualified cycle instructors so that they will be able to teach everyone how to ride safely and confidently.

Vanessa

Vanessa is the Volunteer Development Officer at the Refugee Council and is co-organising this project.

The project begins

I recently had the pleasure of delivering cycle maintenance training to three volunteers, so they in turn can work with and teach youths to maintain bicycles on a "earn a bike" scheme.

Two of the volunteers were British and had only basic knowledge of bicycle maintenance but, through their great enthusiasm for the project they finished the training with impressive confidence. The third volunteer a refugee from Iran was just a pleasure to work with and showed a great understanding of bicycle maintenance from the beginning, as he had previously fixed bicycles in Iran. It was great for him to be able to apply his own skills in a another country.

Overall I think that this is a very exciting project, that will have a very positive impact on the lives of some lucky refugee youths in London.

Dave trained our volunteers in cycle maintenance and runs a similar project with homeless clients in London.