Today: Rotary Collecting Used Bikes, Sewing Machines In Newtown

NEWTOWN, PA ? Pedals for Progress and the Newtown Rotary Club are teaming up to hold a used bicycle and sewing machine collection today (Saturday, Oct. 14) in the parking lot across from Olde St. Andrews Church, South Sycamore Street, Newtown.

Donated used adult and children?s bikes in repairable condition can be dropped off between 9 a.m. and 12 p.m., rain or shine. In addition, working portable sewing machines also will be accepted.

Bike parts, disassembled bikes, and rusted bikes will not be accepted.

Used bike donors are asked to chip in a minimum $20 donation to help cover the $40 cost to collect, process, ship, rebuild, and distribute each bicycle to impoverished nations in Latin America and Africa.

(Courtesy of Pedals for Progress)

Over the past 21 years, the club has collected more than 3,000 used bicycles, according to Rotarian Dr. Jerry Agasar, who has chaired the drive for the past two decades. ?I never thought it would be this amazing.?

?Three thousand bicycles. That?s 3,000 lives changed,? said Alan Schultz, president of Pedals For Progress, an organization that collects used bikes and sewing machines, reconditions them, and then ships them overseas to recipients in third-world countries.

Right now, according to Schultz, millions in third-world nations are stuck in an unending cycle of poverty that could be reversed with a simple donation of a bicycle.

Schultz said every family that receives a bike or a sewing machine is lifted out of poverty permanently.

?With a bicycle, they can move five times more and push that product to the road faster,? said Schultz. ?If you can fundamentally change the movement of goods and services, you have economic growth,? he said.

?And with a sewing machine, they can create their own business. When I was in Tanzania and I met a woman who was able to put all four of her children through school because of her sewing machine,? said Schultz.

To make it all happen, P4P relies on support from the homefront and from organizations like the Newtown Rotary Club, which has teamed up with Pedals for Progress for the past 21 years to collect bikes and sewing machines.

?The first time we did this we got about 100 bikes,? said Agasar. ?I personally thought it would last a year or two getting bikes from the community. But here we are 21 years later and we?re still collecting.?

(Courtesy of Pedals for Progress)