Gender Equality Vietnam Project #13980

100 Bikes for 100 Girls

by Rock-Paper-Scissors Children's Fund

Project Report | Jan 18, 2017
Bikes to Repair

By Sara and Giao | RPS Founder and Staff

Trinh and her newly repaired bike

Dear Friends,

In 2016 you helped us provide 411 girls in Vietnam with new bikes! This has brought a great deal of joy to so many girls and their families, we just can't thank you enough. We hope to continue to give even more bikes in 2017, and have already been able to give 40 bikes this month alone. Thank you for your support!

As you probably know, the bicycle is the main method of transportation used to get to school---there are no school buses in the rural areas of Vietnam. This being said, we know that we will probably never be able to provide bikes to all of the girls in these communities as much as we would love to, but we have decided that we can certainly help to maintain some of their existing old bikes.

Last summer we received a small grant of $1000 from our local rotary club to pilot a small bike repair program for both boys and girls. If you've ever gone to a school in rural Vietnam when it is in session, you'll see in the school yard hundreds of bicycles. After experiencing this so often, and seeing what terrible condition many of the bikes often are in, we decided to simply hire a local mechanic to go to the schools during the day and repair bikes! We started this in October and have tried it at three schools so far with great success. We have repaired over 80 bikes with new brakes, seats, tires and tubes. The kids love it. Below is a little story we would like to share with you about one of the kids who had her bike repaired.

This story is written and translated by our in-country staff.

Story from the Field~~~~

When we met Trinh on the second day of the Rock-Paper-Scissor's bike repair workshop at her school, she hadn’t brought her bike and had walked instead, but when she heard about the program, she asked to have her name registered in our list for the next bike repair day. After one week we returned to the school, and Trinh did not have her bike again, but rushed back home to get it for us to repair. With a smile she said she was not about to miss the chance that would never come again, to have her bike fixed for free! We repaired Trinh’s bike with a tune up, a new seat, a new front basket and a new cover for the back wheel.

Trinh, she is 10 years old and in the 5th grade. Her teachers say that she is an excellent student at school. Trinh is the middle child of three siblings and she lives with her family in a little fishing village near the elementary school in the province of Khanh Hoa. Her dad is a fisherman and her mom does odd jobs, both of them work so hard to raise the three children and try to keep them in school, education is not free in Vietnam, so it is very hard for her family.

On the day that we talked to Trinh, she was in a hurry rushing to her classroom, we just had enough time to stop her and ask where she was going! She said she had to go to the computer room to practice the online English test. She was preparing for the well-known English language contest for gifted students called IOE (International Olympic English) in Vietnam. We were so impressed and so excited about this because we know that the contest is very competitive.

Trinh was so happy to have her very old bike repaired that day, and thanked us greatly.

~~~~

Thank you again for your kind support! Please visit our website and learn about all of our programs in Vietnam.

New bike-Jan 2017

Girls and their bikes-Jan 2017

New bike 2017

New Bike and Helmet

Links:

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Oct 20, 2016
A Stolen Bike Leads to a Gift

By Sara Nerone | Founder and President

Cleaning their bikes.

Dear Friends of our Bikes for Girls Program,

I would like you to meet Jane and Stephen, two avid bicyclists and new Rock-Paper-Scissor's volunteers. In 2013-2014 the couple decided to make a change in their lives and left their corporate jobs to take a trip around the world on their bikes. Over 18 months they traveled through 22 countries, Vietnam being one of them. Of all the countries they traveled to, they became very fond of Vietnam and its people, especially the children who would ride behind them on their beat up old bikes when they rode through the villages. Unfortunately when they returned home after the trip, Stephen’s beloved bike was stolen in Los Angeles. As sad as it was for him to lose the bike that he had circled the world on, Stephen did something out of the ordinary, and turned the experience into something joyous. When Stephen’s friends and followers found out that his bike had been stolen, they offered to buy him a new bike, but this is how Stephen responded:

“If you have the money to help me, a fairly privileged Westerner, you have the money to help someone with a greater need, and I encourage you to do that. If my bike theft can help a group of young girls in Vietnam, then it makes the heartache worthwhile.”

With this he started a fundraiser and ended up raising enough money to buy 30 new bikes for girls. We were so grateful to Stephen, he had given away the new bike that he would have received from friends, selflessly to the girls that we support in Vietnam.

This summer we were lucky enough to have Jane and Stephen join us as volunteers in Vietnam. Stephen is now a certified yoga instructor and teaches in studios all over the world, and Jane is a freelance writer and runs their online consulting business called My Five Acres where she helps people lead adventurous lives. During the summer they had been working in Southeast Asia, and could easily join our group. Over the past year, they had contacted me about helping out with our Bikes for Girls program in any way that they could, so I introduced them to the idea of helping us develop our bike repair and maintenance program.

This summer thanks to Jane and Stephen, who developed the program materials and trained our staff, we have started to incorporate a simple bike maintenance and care training program for the girls when they receive their new bikes. This includes things like how to clean your bike, how often, where to keep your bike to reduce rust, adjusting the seat and handlebars for a proper fit, and how to check air and pump up the tires. Jane and Stephen personally piloted the new program, training 50 girls in July. We have since donated 60 bikes and our staff in Vietnam has trained all 60 girls.

We are so thankful to Jane and Stephen and grateful to be able to make this connection for them back in Vietnam.

Thank you all for being a part of this program—thanks to you we have given 352 bikes so far this year and provided 110 girls bike maintenance training!

Sara

PS-Please email me at sara@rockpaperscissorschildrensfund.org if you would like to learn more about volunteering, or helping us in any way.

Jane and Stephen teaching bike maintenance

Bike maintenance lessons

Bike maintenance training for the girls

Jane and Stephen sharing their bike knowledge

A new bike

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Jul 22, 2016
Girls need Bikes in Vietnam

By Sara Stevens Nerone | Founder

Being interviewed about her new bike

It’s the end of July and I’m writing to you from my hotel room in Hue City, Vietnam where the weather currently reads “105F, but feels like 133F”!! As the founder of Rock-Paper-Scissors I come to Vietnam once a year for a month to bring young musicians, artists and teachers from the U.S. to volunteer to help us run our ethnic minority camps, work with our staff here and teach our students attending our three small music and art schools. At the same time our volunteers also participate in giving bikes to girls at local schools. Over the last three weeks we have given 40 bicycles, making the total number for this year so far, 240 girls receiving new bikes.

This summer a volunteer videographer from the U.S. has also traveled with us and he is documenting how we give bikes and how we use your donations. He has been working hard to interview some of the girls at their homes with their parents. This young nine year old and her family in the photos were very patient with us, allowing him to film and interview them in and out of their house. She told us how excited she was to have the bike because now she could carry two of her siblings on the back of it to school. All together the family was very excited to receive such a beautiful gift and requested that we please thank the people in the United States who so kindly gave the money to buy the bike.

During the interview we learned that she was one of five children. Her mother and father are working very hard to keep the children in school, but her father told us that sometimes there is only a little bit of work to even keep him busy. He hoped that he would be able to provide the schooling that the kids need, but felt that he could not make any promises and had to “see what the future brought to his family”.

The following week during our second bike giving I met an 84 year old grandmother who personally wished to say hello and thank me for giving the bikes. She had been taking care of her granddaughter alone for a number of years. While she was telling me how excited she and her granddaughter were for being chosen to receive a bike, she became overwhelmed with emotion and began to cry. She told me that it would have been very hard for her to afford to buy a bike on her own for her granddaughter.

These are just two stories from the many girls and families that you have supported over the past few years. I wish that each of you, or donors, could meet and visit with these girls like I have to be able to see firsthand the difference you are making. I thank each of you again for donating to these beautiful kids.

Sara

PS-Please email me at sara@rockpaperscissorschildrensfund.org if you would like to learn more about volunteering or helping us in any way.

The family

Filming the ride home

Grandmother and daughter receiving a bike

Heading home

Teaching the girls about wearing helmets

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