All posts by Michael Sabrio

P4P/SP 2025 Annual Report: 10/01/2024 to 09/30/2025

December 5, 2025 Michael Sabrio

Pedals for Progress, a New Jersey nonprofit corporation, empowers sustainable economic development by recycling bicycles and sewing machines from the U.S. and shipping them to motivated people in the developing world. Pedals for Progress (P4P) is a nonprofit charity incorporated under the laws of New Jersey and registered with the Internal Revenue Service as a tax-exempt charity under section 501(c)(3) of the federal tax code (EIN: 22-3122003). An eleven-member unpaid board of trustees oversees a paid staff of 2 and a network of hundreds of volunteers.

2025 HIGHLIGHTS

Pedals for Progress shipped 7 containers and 2 LCL (Less than Container Load) shipments for a total of 3,103 bicycles, and 359 sewing machines, to 4 nonprofit agency partners in 4 developing countries. This brings cumulative donations shipped since 1991 to 171,335 bicycles, 6,878 sewing machines.

We concentrated our collection operations within the New York City and Philadelphia suburbs increasing our efficiency. Our bicycle and sewing machine collections were sponsored by 35 community partners in five states.

2025 Shipments

Recipients of Fiscal 2025 Bicycle Container Shipments

Absolute Bikes Tirana, Tirana, Albania 436 Bikes and 30 Sewing Machines, 435 bikes and 40 sewing machines
FIDESMA, Chimaltenango, Guatemala, 460 bikes and 25 sewing machines, 431 bikes and 30 sewing machines
God Cares Outreach (P4P-Belize), Belize City, Belize 440 bicycles and 30 sewing machines, 465 bikes and 60 sewing machines
GoBike, Kosovo, Pristina, 436 bikes

Started the year 10/1/24 with 119 bicycles in inventory.

Ended the year 9/30/25 with 162 bicycles remaining in inventory.

2025 Total Shipped: 3,103, Total Collected (from scheduled collections): 2,438

Bicycle Shipments by Region

	Fiscal 2025	Fiscal 2024
Africa	0%	53%
Asia	0%	0%
Central America	58%	22%
Eastern Europe	42%	25%

Recipients of Fiscal 2025 Sewing Machine LCL Shipments

Mityana Open Troop Foundation, Uganda (144 sewing machines)
P4P container shipments – 215 sewing machines (see above)

Started the year 10/1/24 with 252 sewing machines in inventory.

Ended the year 9/30/25 with 360 sewing machines in inventory.

2025 Total Shipped: 359, Total Collected: 402

Sewing Machines Shipments by Region

	Fiscal 2025	Fiscal 2024
Africa	40%	82%
Asia	0%	0%
Central America	40%	6%
Eastern Europe	20%	12%

OVERSEAS PARTNERS

During the year, Pedals for Progress continued to serve our smaller reliable partners for the majority of our shipments with the addition of one program that was previously inactive. We have slowly shifted our focus to our longer standing programs to ensure maximum output from our donated material. This more conservative approach will allow us to quickly and effectively ship bicycles to trusted sources, further ensuring donor support is used to its fullest capacity.

The most critical factors in creating a sustainable, self-financing partnership are shipping costs and effective administration by our overseas partners. We currently consider 4 partnerships as sustainable, i.e., capable of paying for successive shipments. Experience has proven that when the shipping costs are at or below $15 per bike or $10 per sewing machine, with good management, this cost is low enough to sustain a self-financing partnership. Without charitable donations, grants or other funding, Pedals for Progress is limited to working primarily in Central America and the Caribbean, while Africa and Eastern Europe require subsidies to pay their higher shipping costs. Overseas distribution success is determined by per unit cost. Landlocked countries remain beyond our reach due to excessive inland transportation costs. Domestic shipping is also expensive; our domestic inland trucking costs to get shipments to port have more than doubled in the last five years.

While our primary goal is to supply environmentally sound transportation to communities and stimulate the greater movement of goods and services, our partners often generate extra funds from the bikes we ship them. These windfall funds, in turn, finance a breadth of community development activities.

Still, we are hopeful that other partner organizations, including some that did not receive bikes in 2025, will pay all or most expenses for new shipments in fiscal 2026, or subsidies will be found to initiate new programs.

CONTINUING PARTNERS

Guatemala: Fundación Integral de Desarrollo Sostenible y Medio Oriente (FIDESMA), San Andrés Itzapa, Chimaltenango
Albania: Absolute Bikes Tirana, Tirana
Belize: God Cares Outreach, Belize City
Uganda: The Mityana Open Troop Foundation, Mityana

NEW PARTNERS 2025

P4P was able to take on one “new” program for fiscal 2025. As we have shifted our focus to aiding successful long-term programs, we were comfortable revisiting one with a previous relationship. In fiscal 2025 we were able to return to supporting GoBike in Kosovo, after their brief pause in operations due to covid. With their operations back up and running, we were thrilled to welcome a familiar program to our network of support:

Kosovo: GoBike, Pristina

FINANCES

2025 was a good year for Pedals for Progress finances. We started fiscal 2025 in a good financial position with a strong balance sheet. Our operating income relies on four primary income streams: cash donations with bikes and sewing machines, cash donations from the twice-annual solicitation, corporate donations, and revolving funds and fees from our international partners.

Solicitations remained about the same to our previous year, with larger donations from a couple of long-term supporters helping us meet our solicitation goals. These larger donations continue to be key to our seasonal collection operations as they help us get through slower, yet important winter months. We do forecast some individual support to dwindle but hope to maintain financial security through dollars with bikes and larger individual donations.

Direct corporate donations continue to decrease due to a focus on employee matching programs. We are actively applying to be seen in these employee databases and encourage our supports to nominate P4P for their companies’ giving programs.

Our sustaining international partners are expected to reimburse Pedals for Progress for the cost of containers or LCL shipments. These are categorized as “revolving funds”: the partners save income to pay for successive shipments. This category met expectations as the number of containers shipped to sustaining partners met the plan. Overall, 2025 operating income exceeded budget.

Operating expenses include four large categories: employee and officers’ compensation, shipping and packing, collections expenses, and office rent. Shipping and packing expenses continue to remain high largely due to the increased cost of shipping and fuel. Collection expenses, office rent, and all remaining minor expenses categories met expectations.

P4P in 2025 had a few extraordinary items. P4P has a conservative investment policy. 2025 was a shaky period for stocks, bonds, and mutual funds as they generally maintained value in the long run. These generated some income for P4P as did some of the stock donations.

Overall, 2025 met financial expectations for P4P.

Balance Sheet and Profit & Loss statements are attached.

CORPORATE AND IN-KIND DONORS

FedEx continues to deliver to New Jersey, at no cost, the bicycles collected by the P4P Vermont and the Green Mountain Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, based in Burlington, Vermont. We’d like to thank our friends in Vermont and the many other organizations involved in their efforts.

We’d like to thank Martys’ Reliable Cycle and Jesse Epstein for donating store space and time, to help launch drop off sites across their five locations. They have helped us collect 100+ bicycles this fiscal year.

Millburn Public Waste has graciously acted as a drop off location for residents of Millburn and Far Hills and donates lot space and covers the cost of removal shipment overseas.

Mavis in Califon, at no cost, donated trucking maintenance.

Thank you to the many corporations that participate through matching gifts.

We are very thankful for the support of these organizations and the recognition they have given us.

KEY VOLUNTEERS

Pedals for Progress depends on the efforts of volunteers, several hundred of them, to publicize and work collections, prep bikes for shipping, help us warehouse bikes, and eventually load them into containers bound for our partner agencies overseas.

A special thanks to Michael Sabrio for managing at bike collections and maintaining Webmaster duties; Maureen Greenbaum for aiding in online advertisements and expansion efforts.

We thank our Tinkerers Dennis Smyth, Paul Lemaire and Mary O’Brien for their excellent work refurbishing many of the sewing machines we ship.

Thank you to Joanne Heidkamp, Paul Demers, Bob Thompson, and Mary O’Brien for leading, organizing, and executing bicycle and sewing machine procurement throughout the state of Vermont: 224 bikes and 82 sewing machines collected.

We especially thank these collectors:

Jerry Agasar with the Newtown Rotary Club: 122 bikes and 12 sewing machines collected

Casey Walsh with Faith Lutheran Church: 64 bikes and 13 sewing machines

John Greenberg with St. John’s Episcopal Church: 146 bikes and 6 sewing machines collected

Daryl Detrick with the Warren Hills HS Computer Science Club: 112 bikes and 37 sewing machines collected

Ridgewood Recycling: 129 bikes collected

David Hanrahan and Alicia Fichera with the Vineland Rotary Club and DNS Solutions: 102 bikes and 16 sewing machines collected

Kip Bateman and the Branchburg Rotary Club: 146 bikes and 6 sewing machines collected

Stephen Ellerman and the Morristown Rotary Club: 141 bikes and 8 sewing machines collected

PROGRAM CHALLENGES

Pedals for Progress began the year on a strong and positive note and we were able to maintain strong financial standing. We still faced challenges stemming from rippling effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic and its lasting effects on our economy, particularly inflation, and increased prices of gasoline and shipping. There has been a lingering supply chain issue that periodically slows shipments.

Pedals for Progress has been able to maintain a very slim employee base after the full transition of leadership that began in 2022 but still face the need to fundraise for support.

The bicycles collected this year continue to be the highest quality bikes that we have ever collected. The most common brand name was Trek and we collected over 80% mountain bikes in the adult bike category. The vast majority of bikes we collected were originally sold in a bike shop for a relatively high price.

Our spring collection season, while beginning to diminish, has slowly rebounded in success. Our fall collections season has greatly improved and now considered our strong season. The decrease in collection totals for our spring collections season is unknown as sponsorship remained on par with FY24. As we are reliant on the success of collections to keep us financially active, we had to rely heavily on our summer solicitation to help us keep up with our added salary line and general operations.

Encouraging pre-collection efforts with our sponsors continues to be a challenge mostly due to storage restraints on smaller clubs. We hope to find solutions to make drop offs easier for donors. We hope to improve collection efforts by working more closely with our collection sponsors on advertisement and pre-collection efforts.

P4P was fortunate to receive a large one-time donation this spring that further helped our program with decreased bicycle donations felt this spring. This highlights the need for increased individual donations and the importance of fundraising efforts outside our collection efforts.

Pedals for Progress developed partnerships worldwide to diversify relationships and reduce the risk of events in one country or region negatively affecting our operations. Since reduction of transportation costs is doubtful, we are seeking sponsorships to supplement our African and other high cost partnerships. Partner programs in Central America, which have a landed cost of under $15 per bike, are successful financially and require no further subsidies to continue shipments. P4P inland partners in Eastern Europe and Africa will fail without financial support. International shipping costs in these regions run from $16 per bike on the coast to as high as $38 inland (Uganda).

Shipping the sewing machines within bicycles shipments makes the delivery of these heavy objects affordable. However, our bicycle partners need relatively few sewing machines. The challenge is to find the funding to deliver machines to small sewing programs like the Mityana Open Troop Foundation in Uganda or to get them delivered very inexpensively. Most new sewing projects require only two pallets of machines. Due to that low volume, initial shipments were previously shipped via air freight, which is very expensive. P4P developed in 2013 the capacity to ship by boat individual pallets of sewing machines at a very reasonable cost. This low-cost shipping allows us to expand our small standalone sewing machine projects globally.

GOALS FOR 2026

During fiscal 2026, Pedals for Progress plans to ship approximately 3,000 bicycles and 400 sewing machines. Collection sites where we send our personnel will be limited to the greater suburbs of New York and Philadelphia. Bicycles collected outside this region need to be delivered to our New Jersey warehouse by the collection sponsors. We aim to add many more collections sponsors to help us meet these expected goals. We encourage interested individuals or groups to reach out to us to inquire about sponsoring a collection.

We also aim to make donating to Pedals for Progress easier and more convenient. We are slowing introducing drop off programs to do so, but still face financial problems setting up and maintaining these sites.

Pedals for Progress challenges continue to be financial, not supply-side driven. With more funding, we can collect significantly more bikes within our current footprint and initiate more programs internationally. Increasing production requires more staff for attending potential collections and more vehicles on the road. The operational costs of producing the bicycles and sewing machines are significant. P4P is unable to accept bicycles without an accompanying cash donation; this limits production. Our collection efforts that produce the product we deliver. In many ways, you can think of P4P as a trucking company. Every trip in the truck produces more bicycles and sewing machines, our products. These products make the difference globally by helping people in need help themselves.

2025 BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Jamie Acosta
Jerry Agasar
John Alexander, chairman
Daryl Detrick
David Schweidenback, treasurer and VP, International Programs
Casey Walsh
Andrew Williams
Thomas Beishke
Ryan Saul, secretary

STAFF

Alan Schultz, President
David Schweidenback, Vice President, International Programs and Founder
Michael Sabrio, Webmaster
Robert Delghiaccio, Warehouseman
Otto Hintz, Warehouseman
Evan Vaccarella, Warehouseman
Joel Ortega. Warehouseman
Paul Salvetti, Warehouseman

Further information about Pedals for Progress is available at www.p4p.org. This includes our financial statements, IRS Form 990s, and information about our 501(c)(3) nonprofit tax-exempt status.

To receive our newsletters or information on how to collect bikes and/or sewing machines, contact alan@p4p.org. To request a donation of a container of bicycles or sewing machines, contact Alan at alan@p4p.org

2025 Balance Sheet

2025 Profit & Loss

Guatemala

Guatemala Intro, Fall 2025

November 22, 2025 Michael Sabrio

Fall 2025 Newsletter

The Spring 2025 Newsletter has lots of information from our good friends in Guatemala about the work they’ve been doing all around the country with used bikes and sewing machines. We recently celebrated 25 years of working with FIDESMA — we’ve shipped them more than 13,000 bicycles since 2000. Here’s the report from Guatemala on their adventures with the arrival this summer of the 26th container and their other activities.

Thanks to your support, we have been able to continue to supply this organization with annual shipments of bicycles and sewing machines. With their new Chimaltenango warehouse and shop, the group’s expansion has put them on track to receive two containers per year to maintain their operations, assuming our production levels can meet demands.

With a 27th shipment already being planned for early December, we are very happy to give yet another update on our longest running program while we prepare. With the increased focus on instability in the countries in the southern half of our hemisphere, I find it incredibly important to keep talking about the programs we support there.

With increased focus on drugs coming across the border from countries all over the global south, our friends in Guatemala and Belize are directly at risk as a forgotten middleman. The men and women we support in these countries feel increased threats as their countries act as a passageway for the flow of drugs to our country.

Putting any one solution aside, Pedals for Progress hopes to help by continuing to lend a helping hand to our neighbors to the south. While it may not seem as direct as what we see in the media, a bike or sewing machine sent to the global south is a helping hand to someone in need. Aiding our friends to help build their countries up, not down, is a way in which we can help make all our homes stronger and safer.

While the solutions are endless, this is how we can help with our bikes and sewing machines. I’d like to thank you for supporting our neighbors in Central America. You will see that it does not come without challenges, unexpected delays and financial constraints but nevertheless, we hope to continue to serve them in any capacity we can. It may be a small drop in a big bucket, but the ripples it creates are lasting.

Albania, Belize, Guatemala, Kosovo

Short Updates, Fall 2025

November 21, 2025 Michael Sabrio

Our full bicycle shipping results for Fall 2025

Albania

Absolute Bikes Tirana – Tirana, Albania
Founded by former members of Ecovolis, this community driven shop promotes cycling, environmentalism, tourism, and philanthropy.
436 Bikes and 30 Sewing Machines
435 bikes and 40 sewing machines

Belize

God Cares Outreach (P4P-Belize) – Belize City, Belize
Supports people from diverse backgrounds, cultures, and denominations, united in spreading hope, faith, love and now, bicycles and sewing machines, to the people of Belize.
440 bicycles and 30 sewing machines
465 bikes and 60 sewing machines

Kosovo

GoBike – Kosovo, Pristina
A community-focused bike shop serving people in Europe’s young and growing nation of Kosovo.
436 bikes

Guatemala

FIDESMA – Chimaltenango, Guatemala:
The Foundation for Sustainable Development and the Environment provides community aid through various support programs and their ECOBICI bike shop.
460 bikes and 25 sewing machines
431 bikes and 30 sewing machines

Thank you for helping us support affordable cycling around the globe.

Collectors

Westfield Rotary: 30 years of collections

November 21, 2025 Michael Sabrio

Fall 2025 Newsletter

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 Collection October 2014 — 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!

Rwanda

Rwanda Update, Fall 2025: New Container

November 21, 2025 Michael Sabrio

Fall 2025 Newsletter

October 2025: 429 bikes and 101 sewing machines are headed to Rwanda! After a flurry of delays, we completed a rare weekday loading on Tuesday, 10/28/25, and the shipment is now on its way to our friends at the Rwandan Wildlife Conservation Association (RWCA). Marking our third shipment to this incredible conservation group, we’re proud to continue growing our involvement with their efforts. Many of these bikes will help rangers access a wider range of conservation areas to log and track wildlife, including the group’s main initiative: protecting the endangered gray crowned crane.

Our partnership with RWCA began in 2021. On May 15th, 2021, we made our very first shipment to Rwanda: 503 bikes and 43 sewing machines. A year later, we followed up with another container of 452 bicycles and 60 sewing machines.

As with many new programs, the first two shipments came with challenges. Rwanda’s inland shipping costs are significantly higher than most of our partner countries, and many of the items sent early on were only distributed only within the RWCA network. Nevertheless, the enthusiasm and dedication of RWCA remained strong. When Olivier reached out requesting a third shipment, with their funding ready and a new distribution plan proposed, we knew this partnership was moving forward with purpose and vision.

“We still have many of the bikes in action. Our rangers and community conservation champions use them daily. In fact, I still use one myself, even though it is falling apart and I really need a new one! In a few villages, there have been challenges finding spare parts or skilled mechanics, but we have been training some of the community members to address these issues.

The sewing machines are also being put to good use. We currently have about 47 women organized in sewing cooperatives, and some of the machines you sent are still being used regularly.

We do have funds available for shipping…Moving forward, we are planning to shift our model slightly — we would like to distribute half of the bikes and sell the other half locally. This would allow us to generate funds to cover the cost of future containers. We are also looking to use some of the bikes in our tourism business, renting them out to visitors and using the income to support future shipments.” – Dr. Oliver Nsengimana

This thoughtful feedback highlights RWCA’s commitment to long-term sustainability both in conservation and in community empowerment. Their new approach will allow future shipments to be partially self-funded while expanding the reach of their programs.

In addition to bicycle distribution, RWCA has launched a sewing machine initiative to create alternative economic opportunities for local residents. Since the pandemic, the organization has observed increased illegal activity in the Rugezi Marsh, which many nearby communities rely on for natural resources. To protect this fragile ecosystem, RWCA established a cooperative model that provides alternative income sources. The sewing machines we send help strengthen this effort, giving families new ways to earn a living without relying so heavily on the marsh.

Thanks to your donations, we’re able to put used bikes and sewing machines to good use in Rwanda. Beyond providing transportation, your support helps protect some of life’s greatest treasures, from the Rugezi Marsh to the iconic gray crowned crane. Thank you for helping us uplift communities while supporting vital conservation efforts.

bicycles, Kosovo

Quirky Bikes

November 21, 2025 Michael Sabrio

Fall 2025 Newsletter

The range of bicycles Pedals for Progress receives is quite amazing. Our generous supporters donate bicycles that cover almost every era. From the classic yellow Schwinn to modern full suspension mountain bikes fresh out the box, we have accepted and shipped our fair share of interesting bikes.

We get thousands of bikes per year at our collections, so it can be hard to keep track of some of the more interesting bikes we receive. This year two bikes especially caught my eye.

The first was Bob’s old skip tooth that was dropped off our collection in Clinton NJ with the Clinton Presbyterian and North Hunterdon Rotary Club. As soon as it was unloaded, it was turning heads at the collection like a time capsule from another life.

Bob told us a little bit about the bike. It was one of his first bikes as a kid more than 50 years ago that helped him all around town. Like many bikes from our childhood, one day he stowed it away in his family barn, where it sat for years.

The age of the bike conjured up a lot of questions like “Is it good enough?” “Is it too old?” “Do you accept antique bikes”. In short: yes. For the most part this was a fine bike that simply had a lot of years behind it. It was mostly kept in a barn, so the elements did not push it beyond the repairable condition we typically ask our bikes to be in. Upon learning about our friends in Guatemala at Masa Critica and their interest in vintage bikes, I knew right away who would appreciate this special bike.

The guys down in Guatemala love these vintage bikes and were very encouraging to me when they heard we sometimes get antique bikes at our collections. The same bike culture we have of fixing and restoring old vintage bikes is alive and well in Guatemala. FIDESMA was able to sell the bike to Muhammed who was absolutely excited to see Bob’s skip chain find its way down south. This important sale goes right back to FIDESMA community outreach efforts to complete the full cycle of our program.

Now in Guatemala, Muhammed will be sure to put plenty of care and respect into this blast from the past. It is a simple reminder of how our memoirs are stored in these bicycles and lived on through others around the world. Thank you, Bob, for sending your special bike to a new home.

Another funky bike we received is this custom beach cruiser we picked up down the shore with the Monmouth social club. I always like using these examples of quirky bikes to illustrate the grand potential of P4P. While this bike isn’t practical as a commuter bike, it certainly tells a story about the person who rode it.

This is simply a whimsical bike. Every time I look at it, it just makes me smile. The long handlebars and the all-black paint job combine a sort of silliness and ruggedness that totally clashes with the beach-bike frame. I can totally picture this bike being ridden down the boardwalk. To me it just screams Jersey Shore.

I love New Jersey, so sending this bike to one of our partners was a complete joy. We always speak of the practicality of Pedals for Progress and the importance of our bikes as tools of personal empowerment. While this bike may not get you to work as quickly as a sleek road bike, it spreads simple happiness and joy to our recipients, illustrating a different side of our mission.

I rarely try to track bikes: I don’t want to burden our partners by having them look out for special bikes among the hundreds they unload from a container they are trying to return on time.

I snapped this photo of the bike simply because it made me smile. Sure enough, one day, months later, I see the same bike with a happy new owner on GoBike’s Instagram page. By sheer coincidence, I was overthrown with happiness seeing our proud new owner of this unique bike.

His smile in the photo, next to the quirky bike, gave me a newfound appreciation for our organization. He knows it won’t be the most practical, or the best bike to get from point A to B, but this man also saw the joy inside the bike and wanted to give it new life. I love imagining the heads turn in Kosovo as it rides down the streets infecting people with smiles and laughter seeing a foreign bike from a wacky country called New Jersey.

To whoever donated this wonderful bike, thank you. Thank you for illustrating the joy and happiness bicycles can bring for people in the developing world. So keep those bikes coming, in all forms, to help us keep spreading the joy of cycling.

Collectors

Thank you to Marty’s Reliable Bike Shop: Our 100th bike

November 21, 2025 Michael Sabrio

Fall 2025 Newsletter

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.

Guatemala

Report from Guatemala, Fall 2025

November 21, 2025 Michael Sabrio

Fall 2025 Newsletter

Clearing the Container Through Customs

FIDESMA‘s 26th container arrived August 9, 2025. As always, with the support of our authorized customs agent, we made all the necessary tax payments to authorize the release of the container. The only inconvenience this time was that the container was flagged “Red,” which caused many delays. Several days went by without clearance, and the problem was that they unloaded everything, then reloaded it, and now they don’t know how to properly arrange the bicycles inside. Then, for anything they don’t like, they want to impose a fine, which increases the payments and greatly affects the final import costs.

Despite the problems at customs, we managed to get the container released as quickly as possible, and after many unplanned days, it was finally transported to Chimaltenango. Costs have risen compared to five years ago. Even so, we continue moving forward and doing our best to ensure that the bicycles are available in the ECOLOBICI (Spanish facebook) Chimaltenango shop.

This is not the first time we’ve had problems clearing customs

Receiving the Bicycles at our Chimaltenango Location

Once the container arrives at the Chimaltenango warehouse, we unload it with the support of a group of friends and volunteers who also love bicycles and understand their social and environmental benefits. They are young people who come to help us unload the bicycles whenever we call them.

Usually, we are more than 15 people helping on unloading day. This time, the container arrived at 2am in the morning — even so, we were there to store the bicycles in our facility.

We finished unloading at dawn, as the sun was rising. We were tired but satisfied, knowing that all the effort had been worthwhile and that we could move on to the next phase — inventory, pricing, and special deliveries to people in need, sports enthusiasts, and workers who want a bicycle.

Bicycle Sales

In the sales phase, we prepare and organize the bicycles by type and quality to make pricing easier, offering promotions depending on the population being served.

We look for children who need a bicycle, young people who don’t have one and would like one, and we encourage them to use bicycles for sports, training, helping with household transport, or commuting to work. We also reach out to older adults who work far from home and need transportation. We always strive to offer the lowest possible price so they can take a bicycle home.

Additionally, when selling bicycles, we aim to distribute them in many different communities and towns to avoid discrimination about who receives one and who doesn’t. We try to deliver bicycles to all kinds of people — men, women, children, youth, and even some elderly individuals.

Activities for Bicycle Donations

During the first 10 months, we planned to donate more than five bicycles in various communities in Chimaltenango and beyond. We primarily focus on finding children among those in need to give them a bicycle. We can see that each recipient is very happy to receive their bike.

The photos show how everyone takes their bicycle home to use it on their streets and in their daily lives.

Social Activities Funded by Sales

In addition to bicycle sales — which benefit both adults and children, and the annual bicycle donations — we also provide support to community groups in need. Each year, we identify communities and groups that require assistance due to poverty, illness, lack of local education, child malnutrition, or the needs of women artisans.

Every year, we look for where and how to offer help within our means. Sometimes, we complement aid from other institutions through coordination and partnerships so that together we can better assist communities facing social challenges.

We are very grateful, on behalf of the ECOLOBICI–FIDESMA project, for this shipment of bicycles, which is number 26–2025. We are certain that the people — children, youth, and adults — will be very thankful when we deliver these bicycles to their communities and towns, where they can use them for work, sports, exercise, travel, and transportation to distant places. Everyone agrees that using a bicycle is a great benefit.

We will continue to share updates on our promotional activities, sales, donations, fundraising, and social initiatives throughout the rest of this year.

Many thanks to David, to Alan, and to all the colleagues who support you in the United States.

Sincerely,

Arnulfo Catu and The FIDESMA Team

Fidesma staff and Alan — Analy, Pedro, Alan, Margarita, Alfuno

InGear - The Newsletter of P4P

President’s Message, Fall 2025

November 21, 2025 Michael Sabrio

Dear Pedal People,

Happy Holidays! Thank you for your support to Pedals for Progress and Sewing Peace.

This is my favorite time of year as it gives us the chance to look back at all the great work we have accomplished. There is always so much, that I find it hard to know where to begin.

Start domestically, where each bike begins its journey, I’d like to thank our donors for parting ways with their beloved items and donating them to our cause. Theres a special kind of sentimentality that is felt with a lot of these items that are donated by the people we meet at our collection events across the tri-sate. The bicycles and sewing machines we collect have a life of their own and we appreciate your trust in us forwarding these items to others in need around the world.

Material objects like these have a unique function as they are operated by people. To operate a bike or machine, your body has to literally engage with the machine, using both your feet and your hands. They require you to almost hug and hold the bike or machine as your pedal forward or push fabric through the feet of the machine. The people operating these machines have felt them, literally held them in their arms in thousands of hours of operation. Thousands of miles peddled, thousands of miles sewn. It’s this connection of man and machine that injects life into these tools.

That life contained in an object creates the sentimentality we feel when letting go. It’s a fact of life that we must let go at one time or another. At many of our collections I get the special honor to watch people let go of these beloved items. I love to listen to our donors talk about their items as they unload their car. As they are in this phase of letting go, you sometimes see people re-live some of the greatest times of their life. Sometimes it means letting go of a bike they rode daily across campus. Maybe the bike they took cross country. Or a childhood bike they rode on their paper route and left it the rafters for 50 years.

The machines can hit the hardest. It’s often a mother or grandmother who has passed away and their next of kin is not sure what to do with the machine. I’ve heard endless stories of the Halloween costumes, the prom dresses, the mended jeans and coats, all the loving creations that were made behind some of the machines we’ve collected.

Regardless of the story, or the memories associated with them, it is always a pleasure to hear these stories and be able to confidently assure that we will indeed find a new home for your item. There is a lightness, a relief, that people show when they know that the item will not be forgotten, that those memories will not be forgotten as we pass them onto their new homes.

Looking internationally, these items truly change the way people live. They are tools of personal empowerment that radiate a sense of independence and freedom. The same objects that were once reminding our donors of who they were or where they’ve been, become objects that are now motivating our recipients of who they can be or where they can go.

These inanimate objects infect people with idea that they can go anywhere or do anything. As our recipients receive these important items, they are able to go out into the world and create their own lifetime of memories and successes. The connection of man and machine continues to grow and continues to inspire.

Your old bike that helped you around campus, will now help someone get to a school of their own. The bike that you rode across our beautiful country will continue to cross another. The bike that helped you on your paper route will continue to employ another young person on their budding career.

The machines continue to create dresses, costumes, and execute emergency repairs needed to keep life going. They are machines of powerful implications, once used for hobbies in the US, now being used in the trades in Uganda. The machine used by a beloved grandmother will be loving used by a new mother all her own in Guatemala.

We are proud to be able to extend your pre-loved items and extend the memories of those bikes and machines. I hope you enjoy the following stories and reports that illustrate some of what we hope to achieve with P4P and reminders of why we do what we do. I really cannot thank you enough for supporting our mission. And Thank you especially for making the sometimes-difficult decision to donating your pre-loved bicycle or sewing machine.

Sincerely,
Alan Schultz, President P4P and SP

pedals for progress

All posts by Michael Sabrio

P4P/SP 2025 Annual Report: 10/01/2024 to 09/30/2025

2025 HIGHLIGHTS

2025 Shipments

Recipients of Fiscal 2025 Bicycle Container Shipments

Bicycle Shipments by Region

Recipients of Fiscal 2025 Sewing Machine LCL Shipments

Sewing Machines Shipments by Region

OVERSEAS PARTNERS

CONTINUING PARTNERS

NEW PARTNERS 2025

FINANCES

CORPORATE AND IN-KIND DONORS

KEY VOLUNTEERS

2025 COLLECTION SPONSORS

PROGRAM CHALLENGES

GOALS FOR 2026

2025 BOARD OF TRUSTEES

STAFF

Guatemala Intro, Fall 2025

Short Updates, Fall 2025

Albania

Belize

Kosovo

Guatemala

Westfield Rotary: 30 years of collections

Rwanda Update, Fall 2025: New Container

Quirky Bikes

Thank you to Marty’s Reliable Bike Shop: Our 100th bike

Report from Guatemala, Fall 2025

Clearing the Container Through Customs

Receiving the Bicycles at our Chimaltenango Location

Bicycle Sales

Activities for Bicycle Donations

Social Activities Funded by Sales

Donate bicycles and sewing machines to developing countries