Youth Program Volunteer Opportunities Posted!

It’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for! Put your helmets on, get your wrenches ready, and let’s get rolling!  BBP’s spring volunteer opportunities for our Youth Programs are posted, and ready for you to sign up!  New to volunteering with BBP’s youth programs?  There are plenty of ways you can help at our first Kid’s BASH on April 11, like checking kids in, fitting helmets, being a bike runner, and more!   Interested in the Mobile Repair but haven’t wrenched much? Sign up to be a facilitator! All opportunities and descriptions for April and May are posted on the Volunteer Opportunities page of our website.  Thanks for supporting!

Where’s Christa Going?

Wait a minute...you posted the Youth Programs Volunteer Opportunities and then hopped out of town?  What’re you thinking, Christa?!

That’s right, I’ll be gone for two weeks in the middle of March learning ALL THE BIKE THINGS at Barnett’s Bicycle Institute in CO Springs!  When I started working at BBP in fall of 2018, I found out about QBP’s WTF Scholarship to bike school just 6 days too late, after the registration deadline closed.  Ever since then it was my goal to apply for the scholarship in 2019. Over 300 members of the WTF (women/trans/femme) community applied this past fall, and 30, including me, were ultimately chosen to attend the Professional Repair and Shop Operations class at United Bicycle Institute in Ashland, OR, and the Professional Bicycle Service at Barnett’s Bicycle Institute in CO Springs, CO.  

The essay application questions asked us how we are working toward gender equity in the cycling industry in both our professional and our personal lives.  It’s important to me that I set an example as a knowledge and enthusiastic woman instructor to all the kids I teach--showing both boys and girls that they can do any fun job they set their mind to!  I’ll admit, though, that I feel the most connection with the young girls I work with, particularly when I see the realization spread across their faces that they are so capable of wrenching on their bike. 

I love this same expression of realization when I ride with friends on their first mountain biking or bike camping ride--we are capable of pedalling up this hill!  Riding my bike has become my passion, thanks to the trails that this land offers us and to the community and education that BBP offers. I’m excited to be able to offer even better bicycle education after attending Barnett’s, and to keep inviting folks into BBP’s community, in order to share the potential of realizing a passion for bikes with our youth and volunteers!