Bike Clark County offers opportunity to earn bike

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In 2011, a group of local cyclists led by firefighter Eric Giacchino, founded Bike Clark County in an effort to provide bikes and cycling education to kids in the local community.

Since their launch, Bike Clark County has been able to connect hundreds of young new cyclists with bikes, helmets and the necessary education for riding safely.

“We’re trying to get kids off the couch and off the Pokémon and on a bike” said Giacchino. 

Giacchino sees firsthand what a stagnant, inactive lifestyle can do to young people. He sees cycling as a way to couple a fit and active lifestyle with necessary road safety. Learning proper bike safety, he believes, makes for better drivers as well. Giacchino’s vision for Bike Clark County is simple: expand bike safety programs to every middle school in Clark County and continue to help kids earn their way onto a bike.

One of Bike Clark County’s primary goals is to allow underprivileged kids the opportunity to earn a bike.

“It’s important to us that they don’t think we are giving them a bike because they’re poor,” said Bike Clark County volunteer, Shaun Martin, a Ridgefield resident and avid cyclist. “We’re saying, ‘here is a bike because you did something extraordinary, or, because you earned it.’ We give them a bike because of something they’ve done, like volunteer work. It doesn’t have to be a lot, maybe five hours, but it’s important that they earned it.”



Martin, one of about 15 volunteers, has been a part of the local bike community for most of his life. Becoming a volunteer for Bike Clark County, he said, was a natural evolution. He thought the idea was “pretty cool” and started volunteering when Bike Clark County workshops were still being held in the abandoned pool at Hough Elementary — they now meet in a warehouse owned by Burgerville in downtown Vancouver.

Requiring that kids earn their bikes hasn’t been a deterrent to Bike Clark County’s mission. Through Bike Clark County, kids from the local community earned around 100 bikes in 2014, and almost doubled that in 2015 with 199 bikes earned — a number they hope to double by the end of 2016.

Martin said because of the behind-the-scenes work of all the great people running Bike Clark County, volunteers like himself were able to do the “fun stuff,” like giving out bikes and helping at Earn-a-Bike Camps.

At Earn-a-Bike Camps, volunteers help riders repair their bikes and learn how to do routine bike maintenance. The camps are two days long, eight hours a day. Earn-a-Bike Camps are also an opportunity for middle school students looking to earn a bike. Volunteers learn to use a variety of different tools while helping with projects around the shop for four hours the first day. On the second day, and four more hours of volunteering, they will have earned a bike, helmet and Bike Clark County T-shirt.

To the Bike Clark County leaders, every new rider they impact makes a lasting difference in the community. They believe teaching riding safety and helping children learn the importance of — earning — compared to simply being given a new bike, is more important than the bike itself.