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President’s Message, Fall 2023

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Absolute Bike Tirana: New Partner in Albania

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Distributing Sewing Machines in Tanzania

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Twenty-Five Years of Collections in Vermont

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Thank-You Letter from Belize

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Peddling Pedals

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Active Partners

Collection Sponsors

Major Contributors

Staff

Trustees

Dear friends,

Thank you for being part of our small circle of supporters that believe in our cause and understand the importance of providing individuals tools of personal empowerment to our friends in developing nations around the world. Many of our supporters have been interested in our cause since the very beginning in 1991 and rooting for us along the way. Whether through financial support, volunteering, or simply mentioning our cause to someone looking to donate a bike, your support goes a tremendously long way. It nurtures our incredible network of people who care for others less fortunate.

As we wrap up our fall collection season, I’ve been reflecting on the history of Pedals for Progress and the time it took to build such a wonderful network of support that spans the entire nation. Pedals for Progress was already five years underway when I was born! Over 30 years later we continue to grow and continue our commitment to our founding goals of providing people with reliable transportation to fuel economic stability in communities around the world.

This reflection comes with the success of our fall collection season. We collected enough bikes to make three shipments this fall (the third ready to be loaded very shortly) with fall collections averaging over 80 bikes per collection. I sincerely thank everyone that made this possible, from our donors to volunteers and sponsors, to our warehouse crew, we had an extremely productive collection season.

The fact that we can revisit some of our regular communities year after year and continue to retrieve bikes from behind sheds or sewing machines stowed away in basements speaks to the size of our network. Through this work, we continued to supply our oldest partners in Guatemala while also breaking new ground with programs in Albania. Sewing Peace has been thriving making several shipments of pallets worth of sewing machines to Uganda and Tanzania.

Achieving these goals depends on the collective effort we put into this endeavor. The bikes and sewing machines are out there; it’s simply up to us to organize ourselves to find them. We are not alone, so we can do exactly that. In my mind, Pedals for Progress has always been an organization of regular folks that want to do good. It’s a small-town organization with small town support, an idea that every American can understand. We have been able to come together to support people we have never met and lend a helping hand through a simple tool easily found in our own back yard.

I’d like to thank everyone again who came out to support this fall collection season. Don’t go too far, we will be collecting again come spring and your contribution can make an immediate difference. It can mean a reliable bike for a student to reach school, a sewing machine for a budding entrepreneur, or a lifeline for a family struggling to make ends meet. Your generosity fuels progress, and your belief in our cause keeps us moving forward.

Greetings,

While Pedals for Progress may be a small organization located in a small town, we are a global network that connects people looking for a helping hand with people looking to lend one. Our mission would not be possible without the help from our donors, collection sponsors, and volunteers. Reading this message, you are likely one of those and I would like to say thank you for playing a role in our success.

Going into any collection season is filled with a list of unknown variables that change week to week with each collection we have. The Spring 2023 collection season has been expectedly unexpected. We held 18 collections, and our sponsors went above and beyond to help us gather as many bikes and sewing machines as possible. While our number of collections this season reached a new high since the pandemic, the overall quantity of donations fell short of our expectations. We received fewer bikes this spring, allowing us to make only one shipment: 428 bikes and 20 sewing machines to Belize on June 3rd, 2023. However, sewing machine production was up and we were able to send two shipments totaling 90 sewing machines to Uganda in May!

While it wasn’t a true knock-out of a season there is a silver lining. In response to rising costs and inflation, we started requesting a $20 donation with each item. While it was an unfortunate decision, it proved necessary to sustain our operations. Despite receiving fewer bikes, we have seen an increase in the quality of the bikes and in monetary contributions. It’s a bittersweet outcome, but this change allows us to continue supplying bikes to our partner programs and maintain our operations.

The increase in our requested donation is merely one potential cause to the lighter than expected collection season. From competing with online marketplaces, increased value of used bikes domestically, weather (good or bad), economic instability, and even pure chance, the list of variables is never explicitly known. With this said, Pedals for Progress moves forward. Internationally, our active partners are in fantastic standing and ready and waiting to accept as many bikes as we can supply them.

Despite the challenges we face, this newsletter highlights the progress being made in our pursuit of economic development. I encourage you to explore the positive impact your support has helped us achieve. I am already excited to collect more bikes come fall, with an optimistic mind, I thank you for your support.

President’s Message

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P4P Belize, Spring 2023

This spring Alan visited our newest partner, P4P Belize. Here is Part 1 of his report, introducing the director, the organization, and its South Side Belize City neighborhood.

P4P Belize Programs

Part 2 of Alan’s report on his trip to Belize introduces the programs of P4P Belize.

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Guatemala

FIDESMA, our partner in Guatemala, is our longest-running partnership.

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Togo Report, March 2023

DRVR-TOGO, our partner in Togo, sent this report on their ceremony for International Women’s Rights Day.

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Uganda

Our partner in Uganda runs training programs in sewing, design, motor mechanics, and other marketable skills for vulnerable members of the community. They held their Eighth Graduation Ceremony on February 11, 2023.

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Active Partners

Collection Sponsors

Major Contributors

Staff

Trustees

President’s Message

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Togo Report

Our partner in Togo reports on an Artisan Fair and the graduation ceremony for their sewing apprenticeship program.

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Togo success stories

Three of the women in the Togo sewing progam report on how their new sewing skills have changed their lives.

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Belize

Our Belize partner runs a sewing program where we have never had one before: in a prison.

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Union Special Sewing Machine

A rare industrial-grade sewing machine from the 1930s showed up at one of our collections and is now on its way to Belize.

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Cameroon Training Programs

Our partner in Cameroon has begun a pilot program that donates sewing machines to clubs in primary schools that train students in fashion and design.

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New Partner: Somalia

We have a new partner in a country we have never shipped to: Somalia.

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Oneonta Collection

An old friend popped up and ran a 2022 collection in Oneonta, New York, only 15 years after she ran her first collection.

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Report from Uganda

Our partner in Uganda runs training programs in sewing, design, and other marketable skills for vulnerable members of the community.

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Active Partners

Collection Sponsors

Major Contributors

Staff

Trustees

Outgoing President’s Message, Dave Schweidenback

Incoming President’s Message, Alan Schultz

Togo

We have success stories from several of the people who got sewing machines or bicycles from our partner in Togo. Read more.

Warren County Habitat for Humanity

Closer to home, one of our most active collection partners just celebrated the 10th anniversary of their retail store in Washington, New Jersey. Here’s the story.

Tanzania

In November 2021, Dave and Alan went on a trip to Arusha, Tanzania, to make a visit to our partners at the Norbert and Friends Missions. While Pedals for Progress has made shipments to Tanzania in the past, our relationship with Norbert and Friends is still fresh, starting in the fall of 2019. Read more.

Guatemala Report

Our longest-running partnership is with FIDESMA, in Guatemala, where we’ve shipped more than 12,000 bikes since 1999. Read more about their ongoing programs.

Ernie Simpson

Dave recounts the life and dedication of Ernie Simpson. Here’s Dave’s tribute to Ernie.

Uganda

The sewing program is up and running in Uganda at the Mityana Open Troop Foundation. Here’s the report.

Belize: New Partner

Pedals for Progress is happy to announce a new partnership in Belize led by Derrick Pitts under the project name “P4P Belize”, an extension of his existing community outreach program. Read more.

Active Partners

Major Contributors

Staff

Trustees

By Dave Schweidenback
Fall 2020 Newsletter

This summer the Rolex Corporation collaborated with the Washington Post to interview Rolex Laureates and to put their stories on the Washington Post website. I was a Rolex Laureate in 2000, and was lucky enough to be selected for the new Rolex collaboration. This is the first major article about P4P for probably over a decade. Here is the article. I was ecstatic to hear the news.

I am featured with Reese Fernandez–Ruiz of Rags2Riches from the Philippines about waste recycling. The discussion was moderated by Jeff Kirschner from Litterati. We did a tremendous amount of preplanning over several weeks getting ready for interview. Jeff turned out to be an incredible moderator. The taped interview took place with Reese in the Philippines joining us at 8pm and Jeff and I in the United States at 8am. It was a great experience and I now have a friend and new P4P partner in the Philippines. We shipped 35 sewing machines to the Philippines on September 29th.

But the reason I am bringing all this up is that for the first time someone dragged out of me the answer to the question, Why do you do this? It’s amazing after 29 years I had never discovered the answer; it was buried very deep. I believe I had it on the tip of my tongue, banging around inside my head. When Jeff dragged it out of me, I was shocked. I have been stewing on my answer for about a week. I had no idea but now I know.

In 1959, when I was five years old, I watched my father die suddenly. He was an electrical engineer unifying all of the various small electrical generating stations on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, into one electrical grid. The life insurance was enough to pay off the mortgage on the house; and my mother, sister, brother, and I started living on Social Security and Veterans benefits. We basically went from an upper middle class family with a bright future to paupers. A great austerity came over the family. It was hard and continued so throughout my childhood.

So Jeff asked me, Why did you do this? From way down deep inside, ripped from my guts and my eyes tearing up, the answer was dragged from my mouth and I was shocked by it. Still today, a week or two after the event, I am shedding tears remembering my answer. It was the simplicity of the answer that shocked me along with the ferociousness of my belief in the answer.

So now I know why I changed the course of my life, created this organization, and have helped over 158,000 families in 43 different countries, countries north and south, east and west. Our mission is not about bikes; it’s about economic development: helping people to help themselves have a better life. I’ve not done it alone; many many people have come to my aid, including all you loyal supporters. So I’ll leave you here with my answer.

No kid should go hungry! That’s why. I never knew that that was my deep base reason. Now that I’ve figured that out, if I could just solve climate change!

Pedals for Progress Sewing Peace Post Office Box 312 High Bridge, NJ 08829 908-638-4811 pd4ls@comcast.net www.p4p.org

June 15, 2017

Dear Donors,

Winter finally ended—I thought it never would—and we are back to collecting bicycles and sewing machines. This spring we have already made three shipments of sewing machines to new partners in Ethiopia, Uganda, and Liberia. And we have made two shipments of bicycles: we shipped a container of bikes to WeBikes in Ghana, their 20th container, and we made our 19th shipment to our long-term partner FIDESMA in Guatemala. This shipment to Guatemala was very special indeed because within that 40-foot container was our 150,000th bicycle shipped!

Traditionally we have sent our newsletters InGear and InStitch, both full of great stories, prior to sending a solicitation letter such as this. The world is changing and P4P/SP needs to change with it. Printing and mailing a hardcopy newsletter costs several thousand dollars. To save money, we are not going to print our summer newsletter; for the first time we are going to have this summer’s newsletters online only. Being old school, I like to have a physical newsletter that I can hold in my hand and read and we will probably print such a newsletter in November for the end of the year. But for now our summer newsletters are going digital. They are available with all our newsletters on our website . The newsletters have exciting success stories from Central America, Africa, and Central Asia that I am sure will inspire you.

Our crew does the hard work of collecting, preparing, and shipping the thousands of bicycles and hundreds of sewing machines we ship every year. P4P/SP gives thousands the opportunity to lift themselves from poverty but we are basically a logistics company. We transfer opportunity by taking recycled goods and moving them to where they can do the most good. We need your continuing financial support to accommodate the domestic trucking, warehousing, and international shipping of our growing production.

Please make a donation today. Your donations guarantee many individuals the opportunity to be successful.

Sincerely,
 

 
Dave Schweidenback
Founder and President
Pedals for Progress