What We Do
We provide our partners with bicycles, spare parts, and tools, which they can use and sell at significantly reduced prices through their bicycle social enterprise.
This approach yields various results:
Affordable Transport
New bike owner can access quality, affordable bikes and on-going repair services.
Sustainable income
Our partners use the income from their bike social enterprises to fund work to help their beneficiaries.
Local employment and skill development
Each partner employs local bike mechanics, some of which Re-Cycle has helped train.
Re-Cycle receives used bikes in the UK and donates them to trusted partners in Africa.
It’s a hand up not a hand-out
Not only are things that are given away not valued, but gifting bicycles in large numbers harms local vendors, who cannot compete with free bikes.
Working with the existing market networks allows our partners to both realise the true value of the bicycles they receive and distribute them further and more quickly.
The Re-Cycle Warehouse
Our warehouse is the hub of activity where the bikes are delivered and pre-sorted for bikes that go to Africa, those that need stripping for parts and those that are suitable for potential re-furbishing.
We rely on the support of volunteers (30 plus) to enable us to prepare bikes, strip bikes and help with the loading and unloading of containers. On average we load around 500 bikes and spare parts per container, this is down to the skill of our staff and volunteers.
The Re-Cycle Workshop
A small percentage of the bikes that are donated are not suitable for the rough terrain in Africa. If they are still in good working order with some residual value they will be put through our workshop to be repaired and serviced by our qualified Cytech mechanics.
The bikes are then sold on to the local community in the UK. The funds raised from the bike sales goes into our core funding, which enables to charity to send more bikes to Africa.
Buy a Bike
We often receive bikes that are unsuitable for Africa, but which we can sell to fund our work.
Dr Bike
Re-Cycle’s Dr Bike service offers free cycle safety checks (Bicycle M-Check) and adjustments for staff and students at the Colchester University Campus.
