Charity Events - Does Haiti need bikes?

Back in 2005, I participated in a bike collection to send to the Gulf area after Hurricane Katrina. I'm wondering if anyone has heard anything about whether shipments of bikes might be useful for victims of the Haitian earthquakes. Maybe no one's thinking about that yet, with rescue operations just coming to a close, but I would imagine a lot of bicycles might have been destroyed in the rubble, and perhaps the bicycle was the only way a lot of Haitians had to get around in the first place.

Anyone heard anything about this?

I just sent an inquiry to Bikes Not Bombs (http://bikesnotbombs.org/) and will post their reply here when I receive it.

great idea. I volunteer at Plan B, the New Orleans bike co-op that received those bikes after Hurricane Katrina. That shipment was enormously helpful to us and the people of New Orleans. I hope BNB is able to arrange a shipment to Haiti.

I don't know if you comprehend the situation...it's a tiny island and the other half of the island is a country also. Right now they are evacuating people from Port-au-Prince and there are still people being pulled from the rubble.

Your thoughts are appreciated, even by me but bicycles would be the least effective thing to give right now. Starvation, water contamination, disease and housing would be far more important things to conquer than giving out bicycles, honestly.

While it's probably impossible for any of us not there to fully comprehend the situation, I do appreciate that bicycles are not on peoples' minds at the moment. That's why I said maybe no one's thinking about it yet. But to be blunt, in a few weeks or a few months, after the dead are buried and the wounded recovering, and those who are able to work are looking for work, even if it's just demolition and reconstruction, will they have transportation to get to those jobs? And how about the foreign aid workers? Given the tiny size of the island, bicycles would seem preferable to motor vehicles within the cities for the personal transportation of most of the populace. I'm assuming, but don't know, that many people used bicycles already. Are they still available, or were many of them destroyed as well? Would an influx of more bicycles help? Perhaps cut down the black market which may exist at the moment if demand is much larger than current supply? Or perhaps it would feed the black market and make things worse? I don't know.

My wife and I have donated financially, to the best of our meager abilities. But we're not doctors or aid workers. One thing I do know a little about is bicycles, and as I said, I have organized something like this once before. I certainly don't want to do it if it's not really needed, and obviously shipments of bicycles shouldn't even be considered right now while shipments of food, water, and medical supplies are of paramount importance. But if some bicycles would be useful, say, 3 months from now, that's a good amount of time left for some group to get started organizing it now.

They need money now. Not bikes, not clothes, not canned food. Seaports, airports, railways are wrecked, there are bodies piled up on streets, there is high risk of disease outbreak, people are dying from hunger and dehydration. They need help from professionals and that means money. Donate few bucks, forget the bikes for now.

Adam

PS.: Sell the bikes and donate the cash.

Maybe I've spent too much time involved with bicycle advocacy, but I can see how donating bikes could help with many of the problems that the other posters are bringing up. The increased mobility from having a bike increases a person or families access to aid, food, water, housing opportunities, health services, etc. When bridges, railways, and roads are mostly demolished, a bicycle will be able to get places that a motor vehicle can't, and it would mean less impact on the limited supply of gas in the country, and less calories burned compared to walking for the rider who is probably subsisting on starvation rations right now.

Millions of dollars are being donated right now. Great! Eventually it will be spent to help the people of Haiti. Right now, it's logistics, not money which is limiting the help arriving for Haiti. Beginning now to organize a shipment of bicycles (which won't arrive for months anyway) won't take away from what Haiti is receiving in the short term, and will only help in the long term.

Great question! If you ask me, yes, but as stated above, not immediately. Perhaps bikes should come later once the vitals have arrived and the streets cleared. A bicycle won't do you much good if you don't have food or anywhere to ride.

There is a guy in Cleveland OH that ownes a company called Turtle Plastics.
He has spent years in Haiti building schools with recycled materials from schools that were demolshed in the US.
A couple years ago we filled a shipping container with used bikes to be shipped to Haiti.
The idea was to teach a few folks to be bike mechanics so they could start thier own business and to give more people affordable transportation.
Don't know how it all turned out but he would be the type of person that would know what would be needed, how to get it there, and what to do with it.

Enjoy

Haiti should should have a giant Moving Sale and post it in Craigslist.