Worcester Earn-a-Bike, Inc.

At A Glance

Location: 

WORCESTER, Massachusetts

Primary Issue Area:

  • Living Economies
  • Climate Change & Energy

Active since:

2001

Tax Status:

501(c)(3)

Core volunteers:

12

Community Size:

184,509

  • Kids Bike Sale 2019
  • Earn-a-Bike youth at The Village (4 King St)
  • Kids' $5 Bike Sale at The Village June 2022
  • Pop-up bike shop at University Park with Youth Mechanics
  • 508BikeLife Youth at The Village (4 King St)

Our Purpose

Worcester Earn-a-Bike is a community bike shop teaching people bicycle maintenance while enabling them to earn a bike from our inventory of donated bicycles. Our mission is to promote and carry out education programs to facilitate bicycle use, repair, and rehabilitation for the improved health and well-being of the community and the environment; and to teach fun, affordable bike repair to neighborhood youth and community members by providing tools, instruction, and repairable bikes and parts. We encourage bike riding as an empowering, economical, healthy and green alternative to car culture. We see the bicycle as a vehicle for social change on individual, community, and global levels. We focus on youth development with our Earn-a-Bike and Youth Mechanic programs. Since COVID, we also fill a role to address transportation equity. COVID exposed transportation inequities for people of color and youth, but the bicycle can bridge the divide. During COVID, bike transportation surged and still remains high. The bikes we offer and repair check so many boxes: low-cost, basic needs, economic justice, healthy activity, and climate-friendly. Our big picture is that everyone in the community who wants a bicycle has one, that more will want one, that they use them frequently for transportation, fun, and fitness, that they learn how their bike works, and that a surge in cyclists leads to improvements in bike infrastructure, acceptance among motorists, and a more livable community.