East Bay non-profit receives community help to build bikes for kids
ALAMEDA - An East Bay storage container company is teaming up with a local non-profit to make the holidays a little brighter for hundreds of young people.
"I enjoyed having a bike as a child and I enjoyed riding all through the neighborhoods," said Alex Braun II, CEO of Livermore-based Units.
Braun is teaming up with the non-profit Kids Bike Lane to build bikes for hundreds of underserved youth in Alameda and Contra Costa Counties.
"Everybody deals with so much. Death by a thousand cuts. How about life by a thousand hugs? And this provides a few more hugs," Braun said.
"Our kids that get the bikes are the kings and queens of hand-me-downs," said Cathy Griggs, a retired schoolteacher who started Kids Bike Lane six years ago, to provide recipients with something shiny and new.
"We focus our bikes on school age kids, especially high schoolers and foster kids because we know when they age out, a bike may be their only transportation," Griggs said.
Kids Bike Lane used to store the bikes in volunteer's garages, but they outgrew that.
That's where Alex came in. He owns Units, which is donating portable storage containers and trucks to move the bikes by the hundreds.
It's helped Cathy solve a major logistical headache: managing the inventory.
500 bikes were moved to the Alameda County Fairgrounds forming a giant maze of boxes.
On Saturday, volunteers will do one of the Bay Area's biggest one day bike builds.
Alex's trucks will then deliver the bikes, plus helmets, to youth agencies and foster homes in time for Christmas.
Braun and Griggs hope the partnership will put a positive spin on the holidays, and be a turning point in the lives for young people.
Kid's Bike Lane already has enough volunteers for this Saturday's big build, but they could always use cash to serve more youth. A 150-dollar donation is enough to buy a bike and helmet for one young person.
More information on Kid's Bike Lane can be found at their website https://kidsbikelane.org/.