Past Profiles

PAST PROFILES

When Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah was born, his mother was advised to kill her son.

Emmanuel was born in 1977 in the West African nation of Ghana with one leg, and to his father, who held the view of many in the African community, his son was the sign of a curse and great misfortune. Emmanuel’s father left the family in disgrace, but the life of his son was destined to be special. His mother, fittingly named Comfort, decided to think differently about her son. She treated him like an able bodied kid, pushing him to attend school even if that meant she needed to carry him the two miles to attend.

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Take a trip to Bikes not Bombs in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts on a Wednesday night, volunteer night, and you will start to understand the potential of pedal power. The experience begins as you approach the entry ramp to their hub and you are greeted by a stack of recycled bicycles leaning against the building. The bikes consistently pile up as local community members and friends to the organization drop them off. You admire this plentitude of reusable excess being collected until a volunteer ventures out of the building and enters the pile to grab a bike and carry it into the building. Following the bicycle on its way, you enter the BNB World Headquarters and are embraced by the aura of pedal power. The atmosphere has an off-beat underground vibe, with a scent of revolution in the air.

In Sri Lanka women are mobilizing on their bicycles to win back freedom in what are ironically called “Free Trade Zones. (FTZ)

FTZs are special areas of a country where some normal trade barriers such as tariffs are eliminated and bureaucratic requirements are lowered in hopes of attracting business and foreign investments. These zones often include labor intensive manufacturing centers that involve the import of raw materials or components and the export of factory products.

Every weekday morning you can find Dave Butcher cycling on the information superhighway.

Drop into his pedal powered chat room and you get the feeling you’ve entered something similar to the Matrix; a strange parallel universe which follows a very different set of rules then the world you and I know. Butcher is an oracle of alternative energy, and during a recent visit to his webcast, powered 100% by his specially designed stationary bicycle, he offered interesting insights through the huff and puff of his morning workout.

Frances E. Willard (1839 -1898) learned to ride the bicycle at the ripe old age of 53.

Willard took to the bicycle as she crusaded for gaining women the right to vote, at the time she was logging 30,000 miles and 400 speaking engagements a year for the cause. During the momentum towards the 1920 declaration that gave women the right to vote, Willard slowly learned to ride the bicycle, but it quickly became a symbolic freedom vehicle, an instrument for social change...

There’s a trendy two wheeled accessory taking over the streets in the most fashionable of European capital cities.

Velib, a rentable bicycle system in Paris, France logged 2 million two wheeled journeys in its first 40 days of operation. The initiative, a brainchild of Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoe and launched in July 2007, exemplifies the ingenuity that is needed to reduce our carbon footprint in urban areas creating the most pollution on our environment.

“What is that?” cried a curious little girl on the sidewalk.

At the New Amsterdam Project (NAP), inquisitive looks and questions are aplenty. Most come from sidewalk onlookers as they catch a glimpse the NAP TriCycle Truck, a heavy load carrying 3-wheeled cycle which adventures along the space on the road between car traffic and the pedestrians. With their start-up delivery business, NAP is attempting to replace internal-combustion vehicles for short term transport starting with a base in the Cambridge, MA area.

It began by Googling the phrase “Who needs bikes?”

With the simple search on the information superhighway, Pat Montani discovered the great need for two wheeled transport in Africa. He quickly compared the need in Africa with the fact that thousands and thousands of bicycles were being left idle and unused each year in the garages of his native North American communities.

A seasoned entrepreneur in the business world, Mr. Montani saw a great opportunity to use his private sector skill set in the social sector, and so, with the support of family and friends, he hatched Bicycles-For-Humanity (B4H) as a recognizable name that could tell the story of how bicycles can changes lives in Africa and show community groups they could make a tangible difference in the world by collecting the unused bicycles in their area and shipping them to emerging rural communities.

Traveling to Jinja, Uganda there is a whole lot for the visitor to take in. Begin with stroll to the spot where Lake Victoria feeds the source of the River Nile and pay tribute to the place where a portion of Mahatma Gandhi’s ashes are spread. Adventurous souls can then brave Jinja’s famous white water rapids on the Nile and encounter some of the biggest known to man. For the more leisurely there is a tour of the impressive Nile Brewery or some great spots for bird viewing. READ MORE

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