Focused Community Strategies: Bicycles for Youth Program

“I never set out to do a bike program, but it seems to be meeting a need right now.”

Michelle Witherspoon is the Youth Development Coordinator at Focused Community Strategies (FCS), a local nonprofit empowering neighborhoods in historic South Atlanta to thrive through neighborhood engagement, mixed-income housing, and economic development. 

During the pandemic, Michelle was looking for ways to stay connected with the students in her neighborhood since FCS had to put their typical programs on hold. While she was out teaching her own kids to ride their bikes, inspiration struck. And what started with gathering a few local kids to go on bike rides around the neighborhood became 40–50-person rides for any kid who wanted to join!

This simple, safe way to gather became a connection point for hundreds of kids and parents. She decided that FCS would try to collect bikes for as many kids as wanted to ride, and if a kid didn’t know how to ride a bike, Michelle and her team would teach them. As they developed the program, they also learned some surprising science behind the activity.

“We learned it’s good for the body and the brain,” Michelle told us. “It not only builds stamina physically, but bike riding has a particular way of helping the brain de-stress and work through trauma.”

These bike rides were clearly meeting a need. But as FCS welcomed more and more kids to join them on their rides, they faced a challenge—some kids who desperately wanted to participate just couldn’t keep up. They were often new bike riders who hadn’t developed the muscle or cardio endurance to ride as far and as fast as the other kids. In an effort to include these kids, FCS raised money to purchase an electric bike. “We got the [electric] bike and put [them] on it, and it was like magic,” Michelle remembers.

With electric bikes, a whole new group of kids could participate. Using the bike’s different settings, Michelle and her team could help kids build up their strength and develop their confidence on a bike.

As kids returned to school in person, the neighborhood bike rides evolved into a bike team at Luther Price Middle School. And last year, through the Be Rich Campaign, you helped FCS purchase two more electric bikes to include more students on the team.

During the eight-week season, kids build up their endurance on increasingly longer bike rides around the city while learning how to maintain and repair their bikes. The electric bikes open the door to kids who often don’t feel like they fit on a school sports team. They give even more kids a place to belong, and Michelle has seen more parents get connected to FCS’s affordable housing and job opportunities as a result.

Thanks in part to your generosity, we’ve seen how something as simple as a bike ride can help a child feel welcome, offer hope to a parent, and allow a community to flourish.