The Youth Bicycle Project in Diepsloot brings bicycles, vocational training, and sustainable development planning to a community with overwhelming poverty, rampant violence, and little hope. The unemployment rate in Diepsloot is over 60%. People who live there have a hard time traveling to jobs, because the settlement is located outside of Johannesburg ­ it takes an hour to drive into city, and at least half an hour to get into some of the outlying suburbs. In addition, the education level of many residents means that the only jobs they are qualified to do are menial, unskilled labor.

Working in partnership with Bikes Not Bombs, a Boston organization that has been providing bicycles and training to people in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Ghana, and many other countries for 20 years, we are shipping bicycles and training young people in general bicycle repair, vocational skills, and business management. We are also working with the community to establish a training facility that will be linked to economic development opportunities right in the community, to increase self-sufficiency and make more jobs available where they are needed the most.