3 October, 2011
A total of 100 bicycles were collected in the parking lot at St. John the Evangelist Parish on Sunday as part of their annual bike drive.
Since 2003, St. John's has collected bikes in conjunction with the Bikes Not Bombs program based in in Jamaica Plain. The donated bicycles are shipped to communities in developing countries as well as donated to teen in Boston. The project is coordinated and run by people at the local level with guidance from Bike Not Bombs Bike Donation Coordinator Stephen Bosco who also attends the actual event.
Bosco says local bike drives, while only a one day event, can have a huge impact.
From 9am in the morning until 2pm in the afternoon, the bikes continued to roll in. Volunteers were on hand to help inspect and collect them, and at 2pm, just as everyone was getting ready to close up and go home, one family showed up with a trailer full of bikes, bringing the final tally to 100 for the day.
Bike number 100 was held up high in celebration before it was added to the collection.
The bike collection program at St. John's was started by Hopkinton resident Bob LaVoie and is now under the direction of the parish's Global Mission Apostolate, a group dedicated to helping the poor in developing countires. Coordinators for this year were Sue Lampert and Paul St. Jean.K
They were both happy with the number of bikes donated this year, but St. Jean said the collection did not quite meet the number collected at a previous drive. At 357 bikes, St. John's hold the record for the most bikes donated in a single drive.
For more information about the Global Mission Apostolate at St. John's, visit the parish website.
