Change Makers Vancouver- Our Community Bikes

As part of a new project called Change Makers I am interviewing people and organisations who are doing things a little differently and are creating positive change in the world. The aim of this is to share some inspiring projects and show that there are alternatives to using unethical corporations, connect people looking to be the change to companies that can help them achieve that goal and maybe even encourage you to start something of your own.

Our Community Bikes is based in Vancouver and from the outside looks like a regular bike shop. However things are done a little differently inside. In this bike shop you don't simply pay for someone to fix your bike, you fix your own bike with the guidance of trained bike mechanics. It doesn't stop there either, they offer skills training, employment therapy and bikes for people who could't afford one otherwise.

It is about education, self reliance, getting your hands dirty and as I learned after chatting with Jesse Cooper, who has been with the organisation since 2003, a whole lot more.

Tell me what Our Community Bikes is all about? 

Our Community Bikes is about education, empowerment, empathy, and accessibility. We look to give new life to the hopeless, bringing back the lost, the forgotten, and allow each person and bike to tell their stories through refurbishment, recycling, and reuse.

How do you differ from a regular bike store?

We allow the interaction of maintenance with the customer. We are encouraging them to hang out and pick up a tool, and learn some technical skills, empower themselves. We also offer a large range of used parts that comes from donations and salvage. This offers a bit more choice in the financial realm. We also specialize in the restoration of obsolete technologies, as we have the skill and parts to refurbish bikes that no longer have after market parts available, or very few. As well, we run different types of social programming, like volunteer training, peer skills, life skills, occupation therapy and job instruction for staff, volunteers and other folks.

What was the inspiration behind starting Our Community Bikes? 

Mostly it was about accessibility. Impoverished or low income families that relied on bikes to move around the city needed a source of inexpensive service and parts. Also, the idea was to create a community hub were many folks of all walks could come together and learn from each other's life stories. Environmental, we were able to create a recycling outlet for all the bikes moving to the landfill, as well as generate revenues from the salvage!

What did those involved with the start up do before this? Were they very experienced in this industry?

The people who helped start up were cyclists themselves, but from different backgrounds and experiences. Only one or two had firm mechanical experience. Many of them though were active in pushing cycling as a transportation alternative. Activists if you will.

Were there any difficulties that the team faced in starting such a unique enterprise?

In the first five years, funding ran dry and the directors were almost sure that we would have to close our doors. But it turned around and through a little luck and some hard work it came back.

At the beginning the lack of experience from a financial, management, and mechanical perspective posed many challenges as well. It took some time to get some experience.

Why do you think it is important to have a space where people work on their own bikes rather than pay for someone to fix it for them?

The biggest thing we face today is a separation from out tools and our technologies. We aren't allowed the opportunity to be interactive with our material possession in such a way that we can understand it's basics. The trend of just being an operator isn't conducive to healthy learning. Offering the public a space to understand their tools and their equipment is empowerment. It foster the growth of confidence and curiosity. We needn't be a specialist to understand but only curious, which leads to many more levels of healthy learning and broadening understanding. It's a path to accepting community!

What advice would you give to someone thinking about starting their own business or non-profit that contributes to positive change?

Hold fast!!   It's really challenging as any business owner knows to start this sort of thing, but reach out to your community for help! Get many hands on board! Look for volunteers that can bring managerial experience and a dedicated team. Don't let lack of funds be the barrier, because some creative media, and thinking and fundraising can bring that in.

What are the next steps for Our Community Bikes?

We are to settle in to our new space, pay off our loan and pay back into our line credit, start some living wage policy for staff, and start a new round of strategic planning. We want to get that financial buffer back, and acknowledge the staff skill so we are able to retain the skill we help develop, and start spinning up more programming oriented towards people with barriers and other various groups in need.

We also have a fundraiser in our space (a party) on Friday the 30th of October, and that we are also looking for one time and monthly donors through our donate button from our website. It goes through Canada Helps, which automatically issues tax receipts.

https://www.canadahelps.org/en/charities/pedal-foundation/

What is the change you want to see in the world?

It would be great see social equity take the stage, bringing about empathy and understand, community, which would in turn trump personal gain and greed.

Thanks to Jesse and the team at Our Community Bikes www.pedalpower.org/

Give a little thought to the next time your bike needs some love and see if you could perhaps support a great organisation while learning a new set of skills in the process.

Reduce your working hours to follow your dreams

I have never been overly motivated by money. It's not that I don't use it and value it, its that I have always valued my time far more. However up until recently that hasn't stopped me mostly working 5 days a week for the last few years. I never really questioned it. It's what we are supposed to do. We work 35-40 hours a week (lots more for some) because that is what society says we should do. When did that get decided? And why 5 days a week, why not 4 or 6? Even though our wage usually increases over time or as we move from job to job most of us keep the hours the same. Why do we do this? We survived on our wage when it was x amount a year ago and now that we have potentially been given a pay rise or got a new job why not reduce our working hours instead of take the monetary incentive?  We often complain that we are too busy to follow our dreams/get fitter/spend more time with the family but in reality the solution is right in front of us if we just dared to take it. It doesn't have to be a drastic change, why not reduce our week just by a half or full day to give us time to pursue what really matters to us? When we look back at our lives what will be most important the fact that we made more money so we could afford an extra extension on a house that is already too big or that we achieved our wildest dreams?

Here are some answers to the excuses you are probably already thinking of:

• My boss will say no - Have you even asked?

• It will  make me look bad and will prevent me from getting promoted in the future - Possibly, but what is more important achieving your dreams, YOUR ACTUAL DREAMS!!!! or getting promoted so you can make more money and be even busier doing a job you don't care about? Besides most people will admire that you aren't afraid to do something different to what is expected and you will learn a lot of extra skills that can be used in your current job.

• I can't afford it - Take a look at how you spent your money over the last month. Apart from food and rent for you and your family what else is essential? Where can you make savings? If you are still unsure why not put aside the money you would lose reducing your hours for a couple of months and see how you get on. 

• I enjoy my work and don't want to reduce my hours - Would you still do it if you won the lottery? If you can hand on heart say you would then I am truly pleased for you. Make sure you take the time to appreciate the position you are in because I believe very few people can honestly say their circumstances wouldn't change. Why settle for anything less than your dreams?

• What about my pension and making enough money so I can retire - Nothing is permanent. Why not try it for 6 months or a year and if it doesn't work out go back to 5 days a week. You may put off your retirement by a few months at worst but the way things are going we will all be working until we're 100 anyway. What sounds better to you; do work you love and don't actually want to retire from or count down the days until you can retire and then do something you love? 

The reason I know the answers to these excuses is because I have been using them for the last few years. I have always done work I have enjoyed and so I used the excuse that because I was doing work that was helping people or raising money for charity that it was enough, I was doing my bit to make the world a better place. But if I'm honest with myself it wasn't enough. It wasn't my true passion and I was't doing enough to be the change I want to see in the world.  I no longer use those excuses. I recently took the opportunity to brake free from what society expected of me. I have dropped my hours at my current work to 4 days a week so that I can spend time volunteering at Farmers on 57th an organic urban farm in Vancouver. Every week I get my hands dirty learning about the organic food industry, grow food for the local community via a CSA program and spend time outside with nature. It's not a big change but it's a step in the right direction. Perhaps because I have made that change this time next year I will have reduced the hours further or even all together, perhaps not. I won't know until I try it.

I realise there are some people who genuinely could not afford to reduce their hours as they are still chasing security and fighting to afford to put food on the table. That is not right. If more of us weren't still chasing money long after we reached that level of security there might be more hours and money to share with those in need too.

The benefits of getting a new perspective

In August it will have been 2 years since I left the UK to move to Vancouver. I know it's a cliche but it is crazy how time flies by. In some ways it feels only last week in terms of time away but it feels a life time in terms of how much I have changed as a person since arriving. It's a funny thing when you look back at who you were a year or two ago. The change is drastic. I didn't notice the change happening although it clearly happened. If I look at myself yesterday I feel confident I am the exact same person, but perhaps not. On some microscopic level perhaps I am a new version of myself with slightly altered views to the person who went to sleep. Over time those small steps lead to a bigger chasm of change.

I also can't put my finger on what caused the change. When I left the UK the direction I thought I wanted to take my life was very different to what it is now. Now while I wasn't completely ignorant to healthy eating, environmental and ethical issues I was a fairly stereo typical English male. If there wasn't meat on my plate it wasn't a proper meal, I thought organic was a good way to waste money, I didn't put much thought into how things were packaged, and yoga and meditation were for people who hadn't discovered running. Now however, I eat meat maybe once a week at most, I try to only eat organic, I have fits of rage when I see food in unnecessary packaging and it can be the highlight of my day when someone says "time for Savasana". What happened?

Taking myself out of the bubble of the UK has led me to be able to hear alternative views on how to live your life. I liken it to when I went to University. Up until then I had spent all my time with my school friends being influenced by each others interests and hobbies. We had all had fairly similar upbringings and so inevitably we were all quite similar people. We weren't exposed to as many alternative ways of doing things. Then I went to Uni and my mind was opened, I mixed with people I hadn't before then, they come from different parts of the country, had different opportunities and therefore offered new ideas. I was able to pick what truly resonated with me from a bigger pool of ideas and beliefs and so changed as a person more inline with who I truly was. Moving to another country has been the same only this time the pool of ideas is bigger and I am able to discover my true self much clearer.

The thing is I don't really know where this change is headed. Have I peaked? Am I changed already?  I feel there's more to come if I open my mind to it. I don't know what that looks like or where it will lead me but I feel I have to explore it. It's an exciting thought to think that in two years time you could look back at yourself now and think how inexperienced and naive you once were.

I look forward to finding out.

Changing my ways to be the change I want to see

So turns out if I change nothing, nothing changes. Now I know that sounds an obvious statement. But this is pretty much the epiphany which has led me to start this blog. It is so stupidly evident that not only do I feel a bit silly saying it out loud it is almost worth not mentioning as surely you are all a lot smarter than me and realised this ages ago. However, I am sharing it as for me it's an important part of this journey. If I change nothing, nothing changes. For quite sometime I have felt an almost daily annoyance with some form of modern society. Everyone has the things that get under their skin and pisses them off. Yours might be middle lane drivers mine just happens to be a long list of things that are mostly unsustainable, unethical or unhealthy. When something ticks all the boxes, such as a non organic, pre-peeled, banana wrapped in plastic, I lose my shit.

Now the realisation I had is that while having a mini tantrum in a supermarket because I've just seen the latest ridiculous idea for packaging can be fun it unfortunately achieves very little. If I want to see this change, I have to change my ways. Sure, I've made some sacrifices and have been inconveniently peeling my own bananas for a while now, but I do still buy food that is part of that system I so detest. As much as I complain about that system, I support it with my hard earned money. I may buy mostly organic, local and seasonal (in that order of priority at the minute) but until recently I have been buying my food from the same supermarkets that sell stuff I disagree with and whose organic produce still mostly comes in plastic anyway. In all fairness to the supermarket if people keep buying the food wrapped in plastic and only having moderately quiet rants about it in the aisle then why would they change their ways? As far as they are concerned I gave them cash so I must support and need what they are offering. What mug would give money to something he disagreed with?

If I want to see change, I must change my ways. If I don't support and like how supermarkets package their food, pressurise farmers to lower their costs, stock unseasonal food, waste food, etc, etc. then I need to change my routine and habits so that I am not supporting them with my money. If I need to buy food I will buy as much as possible at a local, organic, independent store rather than the more convenient and closer supermarket. It might not stock as much stuff and it might be further away from my house but it will be inline with my views and whats more important convenience or conservation?

This "beef" isn't just for my local, unsuspecting supermarket, it needs to be for everything I spend my money on. It isn't going to be an easy process but it still needs to happen. I am now reassessing every aspect of my life to see where else I have been bending over and supporting things I disagree with. It's quite a lengthy ordeal so if someone can make an app for it I'd be very grateful.

And to the naysayers who say "Whats the point? What difference will one person make?" I'm not looking to change the whole world, just my world. If I change nothing, nothing changes.