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Community teams up to get every single student to TRY
15 DECEMBER 2016
Community teams up to get every single student to TRY
A team of local community organisations want to ensure all students in Lower Hutt will be able to participate in the Sanitarium Weet-Bix Kids TRYathlon in March 2017.
YouthWise Trust’s Biketec, Hutt City Council, Sanitarium and local cycle businesses Avanti Plus Lower Hutt and Cycle Science are teaming up for the Donate Your Bike for Good campaign, and asking the community to help.
The ‘Donate your Bike for Good’ campaign is asking people to drop off their old bike and helmet to Avanti Plus Lower Hutt or Cycle Science before Christmas and receive a $50 store credit towards the purchase of a new bike. The bike’s condition doesn’t matter as Simon Gilbert from YouthWise Trust’s Biketec is a skilled bike mechanic and will be restoring bikes to a safe and rideable condition, ready for use.
These bikes will enable more Lower Hutt students to participate in the TRYathlon and in other future events, teaching them a valuable skill for life and removing access to a bike as a barrier to participation. 250 subsidised entries for the TRYathlon have alreadybeen taken up by the lower decile schools.
In 2016, 1,077 students completed the Kids TRYathlon. More than 200 of them did so using some part of the access package put together by Biketec and Council. The package included subsidised entries, access to pools and to bikes and cycle skills training. The Lower Hutt community generously donated bikes and helmets which enabled sixty students without bikes of their own to train for and race in the TRYathlon. Those sixty donated bikes have remained in schools for students to gain skills and keep active.
This initiative would not be possible without the support of YouthWise Trust’s Biketec, run by former Lower Hutt Youth Centre manager Simon Gilbert. He and his team turn donated bikes and bike parts into usable cycles, available to community groups when they’re not used by youth in schools.
To find out more about Biketec go to www.biketec.org.nz
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