Description:
Yellow bike aims to provide bicycles and repair services to underprivileged communities while promoting sustainability through recycling.
Their process:
Volunteer-Donation Based:
Yellow Bike works as a community-run bike repair service through hard-working volunteers and generous donations, with a non-hierarchical structure that promotes cooperation, longevity and learning.
“We run mainly on donations. When it comes to bike sales, it's a sliding scale, but it's donation based. So either way they buy a bike or we do repairs. And then the money that is being paid for it is seen as a donation.”
Sliding-Scale
From sales to repairs, pretty much everything is on a sliding scale, and kids bikes are PWYC (pay what you can).
“So when it comes to sales [staff] write down how much work they did on [a bike], what work they did, how long it took the parts, whether they put on new parts, use parts, all that kind of thing we keep track of, so then we're fixing [it], we’ll be able to give them a sliding scale based on what [our volunteers] put into it.”
Location:
They have an ex-bar, ex- boxing club bike shop (or so the lore goes) in the Memorial Center, room 124, North-Eastern corner, that folks can visit to buy, donate, work on, or repair bikes.
“And we also have the barn space, which up until COVID was pretty strictly storage. And now we've renovated it [so] we have it set up to work as a workshop as well. So in the summertime, we work out there a lot.”
Time Frame:
While the hours may vary, the season itself runs generally from the end of March until they pack up their Memorial Center space in August to make room for the Fall Fair, a move that consumes both resources and time.
Current challenges:
Shortages of knowledgeable volunteers with consistent availability hinder the organization's ability to meet the growing demand for bikes and bike repairs. The August move for The Fall Fair is also a limiting factor that cuts their season short.
“So when we talked about income, we talked about donations, that is our sole source of income. And we kind of like it that way. In a way it keeps us independent. Although, in my personal opinion, if we had someone that we could pay that was knowledgeable, to be here on time basis, and run volunteers, and run repairs, and run sales and stuff like that, I think that within a year or two, they could start generating their own income.”
History:
In 1999, a group of people affiliated with the Critical Mass movement received a small eco grant for supplies and tools, and the city had a dollar-a-year lease plan for unoccupied city spaces for nonprofits and charitable organizations to work out of. This was how Yellow Bike came into working on Carlisle street, in a place called Friendship Park. They operated out of the park area there from the fall of 1999 until 2012. The city then decided that space Yellow Bike was working out of, wasn't worth renovating, and moved them into their current space in the Memorial Center, where the former Occupy movement had been operating out of. Originally affiliated with OPIRG, Yellow Bike is now independent.
Collaboration:
Yellow Bike has collaborated with many organizations in the past and are continuing and are contributing to form and seek connections with different Kingston community groups”.
“You’ve got people, we’ve got bikes!”
Link
Contact: yellowbikeaction@gmail.com 613-545-0404
Address:
303 York Street Rm. 216
Kingston, Ontario
(Memorial Centre)
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