Happy April Fool’s Day!

Probably not an auspicious day to make two transcontinental flights, but here I am, sitting in the Amsterdam airport, waiting for the plane to board to Washington. I’ve just finished my trip to the GCI South Africa office, where we had a site visit from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, one of the major funders of the Diepsloot Bikes project. The site visit went well – all the project staff did a great job.

The project is working with the South African Small Enterprise Development Agency (SEDA) to get more training in business management, and eventually Diepsloot Bikes will be a stand-alone cooperative business, with a continuing relationship with GCI South Africa for the training elements of the program, which will need ongoing financial support. Over the last year, the bike shop has managed to raise more than half of the operating capital it needs from bike sales – an excellent beginning for a start-up business in one of the most impoverished areas of the Gauteng province.

We’re also going to be working on a new initiative for the project – bicycle powered battery charging services. Many people in the townships and informal settlements depend on car batteries for their electrical needs, and so you can find small battery charging services throughout the area, for a fee. With a bicycle powered battery charger, Diepsloot Bikes will be able to provide the same service at a lower cost, and this will provide the bike shop with a steady source of regular revenue. I have found the kind of generator they need to do this – it’s made in Burlington, VT, of all places. The rig will cost $700 to bring to Diepsloot on my next trip – contributions toward it are welcome.

Collins, the project manager, has been doing a great job pulling all the pieces together to make Diepsloot Bikes a successful small business. One of his recent ideas was to get the local casino to donate t-shirts and hats to the project – they’ll be selling these items along with the special chairs they make out of old inner tubes and broken wheel rims to supplement the revenues they get from the sale of bicycles.

But the best part of the trip by far was to see all the children that flock to the bike shop. They come to see the staff, to get their flat tires fixed, to stand in the container that serves as the bicycle showroom and gaze longingly at the nice new BMX bicycles on display. One very small boy dragged his Mom to the shop yesterday, which was the last Friday of the month – payday for most of the people in Diepsloot. She left promising to come back on Saturday to buy him a bicycle. He was a little too small to understand delayed gratification, and left in tears. But today he’ll be happy.

Thanks so much for your interest in our projects.

All the best, Gwen.