At eight years of age, Beth accompanied her mother Robbie McHardy on a business trip to Philadelphia to attend a national conference on Service Learning. As Beth sat through (in her words) “another boring meeting,” she flipped through the conference program, looking for something – anything! – that sounded more interesting. At the first opportunity Beth guided her mother through the conference center to where Dave Schweidenback was demonstrating how bikes are processed for overseas shipment.
“This is so easy to do. I’ve even had 6 years old Brownies processing bikes,” Dave said. When someone in the audience snickered at the idea, Dave looked around the room for proof! He spotted Beth, and quickly called her to the front of the room to learn how to remove pedals and turn handle bars. She accepted the challenge.
Beth begged her mother to help her organize a collection in Baton Rouge. Three years later in March 1997, Baton Rouge held its first Pedals for Progress collection. Mother and daughter contacted friends in five middle schools and convinced them to hold collections at their schools, all on the same Saturday morning. The 350 bicycles collected that morning were all processed the way Beth had learned in Philadelphia and brought to a central location on the Louisiana State University campus. There Beth and her parents and fellow volunteers were joined by ten players from the LSU football team to pack the bikes into an 18-wheeler for shipment to Rivas, Nicaragua. The afternoon’s work was topped off with pizza and sodas (through the generosity of the Baton Rouge Coca-Cola Bottling Co.).
The most remarkable thing about that first year was the fun that these sixth and seventh graders had getting to know each other. In 1998 they decided to build on that feeling of working together by inviting ALL of the middle schools in Baton Rouge to participate. Beth wrote letters and her mother met with principals from 36 public, private, and parochial schools throughout the city. Twenty schools agreed to participate, providing a cross section of Baton Rouge middle schoolers in terms of types of schools and neighborhood makeup.
All told, 207 volunteers worked during the 1998 Baton Rouge collection, which yielded 398 bikes and $1,445 in donations. Beth’s dad, Gaylord James, who received a grant from Exxon for $1000 toward shipping costs and led the truck packing effort for CESTA in El Salvador, with the aid of all 25 members of the L.S.U. Rugby Team. Beth, her parents, and her eight-year old brother Robert would like to draw in the remaining 16 schools and thus create a citywide effort in a charitable project on which they work together for the benefit of others, rather than in competition.
This past fall we celebrated 30 years with the Westfield Rotary Club. On 10/4/25, the club hosted another wonderful collection that brought in 98 bicycles and 5 sewing machines! This brought the club’s total collection well over 3,000 bicycles that have been gathered and donated throughout the Westfield area since their start in the spring of 1995.
Warren Rorden of the Westfield Club has been largely responsible for the club’s collection efforts. A resident of Westfield for most of his life, his family moved to the area from Queens so his father could work at Bell Labs during the war effort.
Warren grew up in the area and from a young age was involved in the community. He shared a story with us from his youth growing up in Westfield in the 50s. As classic as American pie, Warren founded the town’s first hot rod club with his friends and classmates, called the Piston Pushers. With a love for cars, the group of high schoolers would drive around town and onto the newly established Garden State Parkway to find broken-down motorists and offer a helping hand. The Piston Pushers spent time showcasing their cars in parking lots and even replacing entire engines in neighborhood driveways. It was an early sign of a young man dedicated to helping his community through a shared passion for cars and machines.
Years later, as a member of the Westfield Rotary Club, Warren was introduced to our program after a presentation by our founder. Upon hearing about P4P, Warren caught the infectious spirit of supporting the mission to collect used bicycles for people in the developing world. With a mechanical mind that understood the value of a vehicle, and a heart for his community, Warren was off and running, collecting bicycles for people in need.
Westfield Rotary, Oct 11, 2014
Over the years, Warren has led the Westfield Rotary Club’s annual collection events. For three decades, the club has held successful drives, averaging around 100 bikes each year, in the small parking lot of the Westfield Board of Education building.
As with any good Rotarian, Warren brought the rest of the community into the effort. Beyond engaging individual donors in and around town, he built broader community support. With help from the Westfield Police Department and Jay’s Cycle, he nurtured a network that comes together each year for international outreach. He often credits various former mayors and his longtime friend Bill Bansall for being instrumental in early collections.
Warren and the Westfield Club remain committed to their community beyond P4P. With yearly food drives, volunteer work at local food banks, and generous grants for local charities and scholarship programs for students, the club covers all bases when it comes to community aid.
Today, the club is still deeply active in Westfield, and Warren, now approaching 90 years old, is still involved where he can be, even showing up to a No Kings rally despite limited mobility. Passing the torch, he has enlisted the help of club member Walter Korfmichale to help organize and run future collections.
We’re incredibly proud of the work Warren has done over the years. P4P would like to thank him and the Westfield Rotary Club for their decades of commitment. Thirty years, 3,000 bicycles, and tens of thousands of dollars raised is no small feat. Thank you, Warren, for your dedication to helping others around the block and around the world. Thousands of people from Central America to rural Africa have felt the impact of Westfield’s generosity. Cheers to a great legacy!
This year we quietly introduced a bicycle drop-off program with our friends at Marty’s Reliable Cycle. In an effort to help field some off-season drop-off requests, we have partnered with Marty’s to help us collect bicycles yearlong across their three locations.
Drop-off locations provide a convenient way for you to donate your bicycle to Pedals for Progress. The best way to donate is still through our collections held in the spring and the fall, and we encourage you to check our schedule for locations near you. To mitigate an overflow of bicycles for the staff at Marty’s, we are slowly introducing the program to test its sustainability and overall effectiveness.
We still highly encourage and suggest our usual $20 donation per bike to help offset shipping costs. P4P still needs financial assistance to move the bikes from Marty’s to our warehouse to complete the full transit of the bicycle overseas. To do so, we have drop boxes conveniently located at each register for cash and checks, and for you to receive a receipt of donation.
Along with special funding received from the HOLT family foundation, we are happy to be able to introduce this new endeavor more formally to our network of close supporters. Marty’s team has graciously offered time and space, so we’d like to respect their helping hand as much as possible. Please drop off bikes during normal business hours. Please make a monetary donation with each bike. And please have bicycles in repairable condition.
I would like to speak to the significance of Pedals for Progress and Sewing Peace. I have always felt that those of us who work for P4P/SP are insignificant. While we’re collecting and shipping bikes, we’re like workers on a factory floor or laborers in a field. We are warehousemen moving thousands of pounds of steel. We are cogs in the machine behind the scenes.
WHHS students braving the rain!
The significant people are the donors who bring in those bicycles and sewing machines to P4P and the final recipients who have an opportunity. Opportunity in the developing world is a very scarce commodity. It is that opportunity for success through hard work that we encourage.
You need the stamina in the morning to get up and go to work. In all economic discussions, we always come down to the word “go”. The more you can facilitate the movement of goods and services the greater opportunity for economic development, and nothing is more cost-effective, environmentally friendly, and successful in developing nations than a bicycle. So thank you to all the donors who have helped us help someone somewhere else; it really does matter.
At a time when the US government is dramatically decreasing humanitarian aid into the developing world it’s more important than ever that there are organizations like Pedals for Progress who are working on the ground, demonstrating that the American people are good and care about helping the less fortunate. Our goal is to give motivated people worldwide a leg up, not a hand out. P4P is significant and our mission needs to continue.
Shipping the volume of bicycles and sewing machines that we deal with requires a network of people and groups around the tri-state area to dig into all the tiny garages and sheds hiding these used items. We benefit greatly from the networks each group has within their towns as they rally their friends and neighbors together in search of bikes and sewing machines one weekend a year. Seeing the small-town interactions blossom in a new place every weekend has become a big reason why I love Pedals for Progress.
For over 30 years, hundreds of people around the tri-state area have encountered and worked with P4P. Some come and go, as evidenced by the 170,000 bikes donated—each representing at least one individual who contributed. But what has been amazing is seeing the long list of legacy groups we continue to work with. In some of the towns we serve, the collection events put on by our sponsors have turned into something of a yearly ritual, akin to a homecoming game, bringing support from all corners of the community.
The Westfield Rotary Club is one of these legacy groups we have partnered with for decades. Since 1997, the Westfield Rotary Club has hosted collections with us every year, generally during the same month at the Westfield BOE building. The club is filled with many long-standing members who have rallied together in support of our cause. Each of their collections feels like a homecoming game of friends and neighbors coming together each fall for the big day.
As with many of our groups, there is usually one key person leading the charge. For the Westfield Rotary Club, that man is undoubtedly Warren Rorden. He has led this tradition since 1997, quietly rallying the club and the people of Westfield to lend a helping hand to people in the developing world.
This year, continuing their legacy, we’d like to extend a special congratulations to the Westfield Rotary Club for collecting their 3,000th bike! Through their tireless efforts, they have provided incredible service to thousands of people all over the world. The club has been an important part of the history of P4P, with their bikes finding new homes in countless countries.
We’d like to thank the club for their many years of support for our cause. A key part of our history books, the Westfield Rotary Club has even been featured in some of our past newsletters, such as when Dave discovered a Jay’s Cycle sticker all the way in Ghana in 2008.
“As we moved across the countryside down to Cape Coast and then back inland to Kumasi, the royal city of the Asanti Kings, we made many stops to visit our bicycles and their new owners. One such encounter was in the town of Asuman Kumansu. To get there, we drove through miles of oil palm groves and coco tree orchards—coco production for chocolate is a major cash crop—and arrived at three houses, where luckily, the owner of one of our bicycles was at home. His bike was an immaculate gray Schwinn. I knew it came through our system because there was a sticker on the seat tube advertising Jay’s Bike Shop in Westfield, New Jersey. As they do every year, the Westfield Rotary Club held a bike collection last September. Did the original owner of this bike ever imagine it would become the major means of transportation for a poor family in the middle of the Asanti highlands of Ghana?
For me this is what Pedals for Progress represents. We are the link between donors in the United States who want to help the poor of the developing world. Seeing the sticker for Jay’s Bike Shop brought that idea home to me loud and clear. Whoever donated that bike with the hope of changing someone’s life for the better did exactly that. And I was looking at the proof.”
Westfield Rotary, Oct 11, 2014
Building on that history, Jay’s Bike Shop continues to be a supporter of P4P, further demonstrating the town’s commitment to the Westfield Rotary Club’s efforts. Jay’s continues to donate bikes, adding another layer of what P4P is all about. The Westfield Rotary Club’s ambition to be a vital part of their community has made them a vital part of the world.
The Westfield Rotary Club’s impact extends far beyond their collections. They have also energized local businesses like Jay’s Bike Shop and raised critical funds to offset the costs of shipping these valuable tools overseas. Within their own community, the club supports numerous initiatives, including scholarships, polio eradication efforts, and YMCA programs.
We are deeply grateful to Warren Rorden and the Westfield Rotary Club for their unwavering support over the past 26 years. Their partnership exemplifies the power of community and the profound difference it can make in the world. As we celebrate their 3,000th bike collection, we look forward to many more years of collaboration and shared success.
Thank you to these fine collection sponsors of our 2025 Fiscal Year
Westfield Rotary Club
Delmar Reformed Church
Branchburg Rotary Club
Morristown Rotary Club
Vineland Rotary Club
New Dover United Methodist Church
Chester County Solid Waste Authority
Newtown Rotary Club
Pilgrim Presbyterian Church
Watchung Farmers Market
Hackettstown Public Library
Flemington DIY
Monmouth Social Club
Blair Academy
Rotary Club of the Rockaways
Colts Neck Reformed Church
Blooming Glen Mennonite Church Youth Group
Passaic County Office of Solid Waste & Recycling
Warren Hills Computer Science Club
Clinton Presbyterian Church
North Hunterdon Rotary Club
Ridgewood Recycling
Fair Lawn Rotary Club
Califon United Methodist Church
Sri Sathya Sai Global Council Center of Bridgewater
Madison Rotary Club
Faith Lutheran Church
St. Joseph Church
Union Village United Methodist Church
Knights of Columbus Council 10830
Livingston Rotary Club
St. John’s Episcopal Church
P4P Vermont
Green Mountain Returned Peace Corps Volunteers
Rotary Club of Norristown
[Editor’s note: In August we got this email on our google business site:
I am hoping to hold a bicycle collection in Oneonta, NY, and to deliver bikes to a collection site for Pedals for Progress. Trying to make contact with P4P organizers. Can you help me?
– Martha Clarvoe
When I saw this mail, I had a couple of thoughts. First, Oneonta is a 3-hour drive from our trailers in Glen Gardner, New Jersey; that is a loooong drive. Second, a P4P/SP collection is a non-trivial exercise in publicity, organization, scheduling, volunteer-wrangling, bike-mechanic skills, weight-lifting, truck-packing (assuming you have a truck!), and freight hauling.
I was very happy to get this generous offer from Martha. But I had some doubts. What I said: “Thanks, Martha. I will put you in touch with Alan so you can work on the logistics.” What I was thinking: “This woman has no idea what she’s letting herself in for.” I could not have been more wrong.
A great big thank-you to Martha and all the other folks who made the collection so successful. Here’s her story.]
Collection Number 1: 2007
In 2007 David Petri, a local collector and seller of used bikes and bike parts, asked if I could find a home for used bikes he couldn’t sell.
Collection 1: 2007
I found Pedals for Progress through my contacts in recycling programs here in Otsego County, New York. I had been active for many years advocating for cycling, and recycling programs, especially with the Otsego County Conservation Association.
We collected bikes and sewing machines in the summer and fall of 2007, then my friend Barbara Harman and I drove them to New Jersey and delivered them to the P4P warehouse. Here is a photo from 2007.
Collection Number 2: 2022
In all the years since 2007 I had been getting the P4P newsletter and feeling a little guilty that I hadn’t done another collection but I was busy with other recycling projects and my husband and I were working on a building rehab project. But then David Petri bugged me again about getting rid of used bikes. I had a little trouble finding a contact at P4P, but I eventually got through and was put in touch with Alan, the new president. Alan gave me lots of advice about running a collection: processing the bikes, packing them into the truck using plywood for a second layer, publicity, …
We ran the collection through the Otsego ReUse Center, a program of The Arc Otsego, a non-profit that provides support, services and advocacy to individuals with intellectual and other developmental disabilities. Faith Tiemann, who does publicity for Arc Otsego, arranged for a spot on a local TV station, and for publicity on the Arc Otsego facebook page.
After we started publicizing the collection, woman after woman approached me with either a sewing machine or a bicycle and said they were pleased to donate to this wonderful cause.
We scheduled the collection for October 29th, and started the day with 13 bicycles, a bike pump, a bike horn that sounds like Clarabell’s horn, and a very generous check delivered by a couple from Saratoga Springs. David Petri donated 10 bikes and extra seats.
In an amazing coincidence, Lars Schweidenback, the son of P4P founder David Schweidenback, lives just down the road. Lars had helped at bike collections for many years when he was younger, so had invaluable expertise in processing the bikes for shipping. To fit as many bikes as possible into the truck and then into the shipping containers, we had to remove pedals, and turn handlebars down and sideways.
Invention of an Industrial Strength Pedal-Removal System
One of our early arrivals, one of Dave Petri’s bikes, a 70-year-old Schwinn, had a pedal that was really rusty. Despite lots of elbow grease and WD40, by 11:15 Lars had still not been able to remove this pedal.
My 12 year old grandson, Oliver Clarvoe, had recently arrived to help climb into “Mom’s Attic” at the front of the 15-foot U-Haul truck and run a rope around the machines on the shelf and then through sewing machine case handles to secure the machines. Oliver was listening to Bill Ralston, one of the volunteers, and Lars discuss the option of using a pipe to help remove the rusted-on pedal. Ralston went off for a fence-post driver he happened to have in his car(?!?) Oliver disappeared and came back with an 8-foot by 2-inch pipe, which he used to demonstrate some weight-lifting techniques.
The three of them proceeded to slide the fence-post driver over the pedal wrench, then slide the pipe over the crank arm of the other pedal, then apply severe torque with the pipe. The creaking and aching noises of the pedal being released was the sweet sound of success.
Mission Accomplished
We had a steady stream of donations. It was a long day. Our collection was scheduled to run between 9am and 4:30pm, much longer than the customary 3-hour P4P collection. At the end of the day we packed up the truck for the trip to New Jersey the next day, Sunday, October 30th.
I had arranged with Karen Sullivan, former Otsego County Solid Waste and Planning Director, to make the drive with me to New Jersey. A chance for us to catch up and I knew it would make the trip more entertaining. On Sunday morning we met at the truck, scraped the ice off the windshield, and made the 3-hour drive to the P4P containers in Glen Gardner. Alan and Michael met us there, we unloaded the 72 bikes and 29 sewing machines and headed back to Oneonta. Another long day.
Many thanks to the exceptional volunteers who made the collection such a success: Bill Hardy, Shelley Williams, and Ryan Eldred of Otsego ReUse Center; Faith Tiemann of The Arc Otsego, who helped so much with publicity; Lars and Barbara Schweidenback, who brought a wealth of expertise to the table; Oliver Clarvoe, the youngest volunteer; Bill Ralston, who apparently drives around with a fence-post driver in his trunk; and Karen Sullivan, who made the drive with me for the drop-off in New Jersey.
It was obvious to me at the beginning of the collection that I didn’t have enough average volunteers but I did have exceptional volunteers and a supportive community to fill the truck before closing time. Thank you everyone in Otsego County, NY, and surrounding communities for your generosity to Pedals for Progress and Sewing Peace.
Pedals for Progress would like to congratulate Warren County Habitat for Humanity (WCHFH) for celebrating 10 years of service and operation of their HFH ReStore. Habitat for Humanity is dedicated to the pursuit of building homes, advocating for fair housing policy, and providing resources for home repair for local families in need. One of their programs is their Habitat for Humanity ReStore where they recycle and resell at affordable rates donated furniture and appliances that would otherwise be destined for landfills. The ReStore has been serving the area for ten years and has been a fantastic resource for the community since its inception.
WHHS Computer Science Club 5/15/2022
We are fortunate to have a close relationship with Warren County Habitat for Humanity; they have been a collection partner since 2018. Our relationship is due to the dedication of Daryl Detrick, a volunteer with the WCHFH and a faculty member of the Warren Hills Regional High School who also serves on our board of directors. Thanks to Daryl, we have been able to use the ReStore as a site to collect a percentage of bikes donated by Warren County residents. Daryl graciously uses his own barn to store the bikes to help kick off his yearly collection with students from the Warren Hills Regional High School Computer Science Club. This collaboration has allowed Daryl and his volunteers to collect a substantial number of bikes prior to the main collection. This year on Sunday, May 15th they collected 153 bikes and 53 sewing machines!
Community Center Grand Opening 4/6/2022
In pursuit of continuing service to their community, the WCHFH recently had the grand opening of their new community center where residents, clubs, and groups can rent the space for meetings or events. It has been a successful year for them as they hope to use this space to connect the community and broaden the scope of their mission of giving back to residents. The new space has a rich history and has been fully rebuilt and repurposed to serve the community.
Warren County Habitat for Humanity does amazing work helping families and individuals in need, not merely in the square mile of Washington, New Jersey, but across distant corners of the globe. We’d like to encourage you to check out their cause. The commitment and generosity displayed by their program and volunteers are infectious. Cheers to another great 10 years!
The last newsletter featured a memorial to Bob Gleason. It got me to thinking that I should write about other individuals who have had a profound impact on Pedals for Progress and me personally.
I would like to tell you about Ernie Simpson. He was a soft-spoken, simple man. He was a good old farm boy from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. To be a farmer you have to be a mechanic. Ernie served in the army during World War II in Europe, fixing jeeps, and returned home to work his farm.
As he was just about retiring from farming he started collecting bikes. He started to see bicycles being thrown into the trash that had nothing wrong with them or needed a simple fix. To him, it was wrong to be so wasteful so he decided to do something about it. He started collecting bikes he saw and soon had quite a few and he managed to give away some children’s bikes to local kids.
Soon he had so many bikes that they filled his barn. He reached out to Bob Nordval, who was a Dean at Gettysburg College and an avid bicyclist. Bob went over to see Ernie and was shocked to find Ernie had almost 200 bikes; the vast majority were adult bikes. Every one was totally repaired and ready to be ridden. Bob realized that he could never find a home for all of those bikes in Gettysburg so he did some research and found Pedals for Progress.
Ernie Simpson and friends
As soon as Ernie had a place to send the bikes he jumped into action. He produced 800 bikes per year for more than 10 years. He scoured Western Pennsylvania and restored every bicycle to perfect condition. If there was a little rusty spot he would sand it and paint it. He patched or replaced every inner tube and tire. He was so proud that he was saving these perfectly good bicycles from the landfill and getting them to people who truly needed them.
In 1999, when we started collecting sewing machines, he quickly ramped up sewing machine production and recruited his friend Dick Swisher (a sewing machine mechanic) to go over and refurbish each of the machines he collected. As most of the sewing machines came out of cabinets, Ernie built wooden shipping boxes for each one and he printed a copy of a generic operator’s manual for each machine. Besides the 800 bikes per year, he was soon collecting 50 or 60 sewing machines per year.
Ernie Simpson and Charles Mulamata from Uganda
I cannot do justice telling his story but here is a Spring 2008 Newsletter article that gives a more complete picture of the character and generosity of Ernie Simpson. He was humbled and proud to meet Charles Mulamata from Uganda. He was thankful to have the opportunity to perform the service of collecting, repairing, and processing bikes for shipping overseas. He dedicated the last 12 years of his life to rescuing bicycles for overseas communities. We got to be very good friends as I drove a truck to Gettysburg seven or eight times a year for 12 years. Ernie was one of the best men I have had the honor to have known. He was truly inspirational.
Donate bicycles and sewing machines to developing countries
