Bikes for the future

MANILA, Philippines - I first met Joel Floro Uichico in 1981 when I was working for Languages Internationale. He had signed up to take French lessons, under our Vietnamese teacher Madame Gigi Cuizon. By the end of the course, Joel had recruited me to work for Great Asia Travel, a start-up company their family co-owned with Cheng Kang Pua, and eventually moved me over to Crispa Inc., where he was beginning to help diversify the product lines. Fresh from his studies at De La Salle University, Joel was bullish with his ideas, and it took a lot of risk-taking, patience, and understanding on both our parts to try and make things work at the factory, which was under the watchful eye of his uncle, the late Danny Floro.

When our division folded up and he was assigned to Cebu, I lost track of him for about two decades until a fateful trip to Bohol by the country director of the British Council, where I was doing communications and marketing work until early 2007.

Joel was by then running a domestic tourism program called Baclayon Recreational Aquatic Activities Bohol, which organized tours that included diving, snorkeling, kayaking, dolphin watching, pedal boats, and buggy rides. On such itineraries, tourists would see how the local people live and earn a living through farming. They would also see local school children walking to and from school, waving merrily as tourists passed by.  

Sometime in March 2010, Joel took some tourists on the buggy ride, and they were aghast to find out that the children had to walk three to seven kilometers a day just to get to their schools, and yet had such bright, happy faces, notwithstanding their hardships in life. Joel spoke to teachers in some remote barangays, and learned that because of the distance to the academic centers, the drop-out rate among students was considerable, particularly since Baclayon only has 12 elementary schools and two high schools, serving a total of 2,000 students.

The first batch of students receive training under the Alternative Learning System.

Joel thought of getting the children bicycles. Going online, he surfed for “free bicycles” and came across a number of donation programs based in the United States. Since he had no NGO status nor the documentation required by many of them, he contacted his cousin Jojo Grant and asked for help in collecting used bikes that people wanted to dispose of. 

Jojo did something better – she linked Joel with Bikes for the World (BFW), which has been running bicycle collection drives in and around Washington DC since 2005.   

With the help of about 600 volunteers, BFW collects unwanted bicycles and related material in the USA and sends them at low cost to assist the poor in developing countries. BFW set up self-sustaining bicycle-repair operations, which help fund shipping costs. It also runs the Rockville Youth Bicycle Project in suburban Maryland, offering local youth opportunities to fulfill community service requirements while learning about bicycles, perhaps even earning a reconditioned bike which they can use safely on the road. To date, BFW has sent about 55,000 bikes to Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean, where they are used for community service programs for livelihood, education and health.

With the help of Joel Esguerra, he timed a formal presentation to Gensler, an architectural firm based in Baltimore, with the graduation of his youngest daughter Alexa, and got a commitment from the group to start Bikes for the Philippines which has, for the past year, harnessed support from individuals and organizations such as the Firefly Brigade and the Philippine Mountain Biking Forum – all wanting to “make a difference.” 

The triumphant Uichicos with the first batch of donated kiddie bikes.

Esguerra, along with Jo Grant and her husband John, not only began collecting the first used bicycles from their neighborhoods, but also began raising funds to start up the project. Joel then approached the Department of Education’s regional office, streamlining their initiatives for the Alternative Learning System (ALS) into Bikes for Bohol, with schools in Baclayon as pilot beneficiaries.

It took months and several trips back to the USA, shuttling between Houston and Baltimore, before Joel was informed that after previous consignments bound for Africa and Costa Rica, finally, BFW was sending 500 bicycles to the Philippines, thanks to efforts by local parent-teacher associations in Maryland, whose young community volunteers helped to process the donated units for easier shipment overseas. Many of them were school kids themselves, who had never even seen a pedal wrench, but were only too happy to spend their afternoons turning handlebars and the like, just to help underprivileged children in a country like the Philippines. 

Chris Jubac-Schoof, who manages the upscale Peacock Garden luxury resort in Baclayon, agreed to cover inbound shipment costs to the Philippines. With this major financial hurdle covered, Joel convened an advisory council in Baclayon, working closely with teachers and community volunteers. He enlisted the support of Synergeia and the Bohol Local Government Development Foundation. He got mechanics on board, along with trainors who will be in charge of ensuring that the children will be taught transport rules and safety procedures. A workshop with DepED officials and community leaders was also held to map out mechanics of distribution to students in the ALS program, along with a four-year monitoring scheme to evaluate the impact on the children’s academic performance. 

Joel Uichico and Jo Grant at the Gensler bike donation depot.

When the container finally arrived in Manila, Joel and his team of program administrators including eldest son Adrien, brother Jake and his wife Marisun, arranged for the bikes to be stored, while being checked and repaired at the Rufino warehouse in Merville. Two months later, they were en route to Bohol, with a generous discounted shipment rate given by Airspeed International through Rosemarie Rafael. On the receiving end, the Schoof family, well-known philanthropists in Bohol, also agreed for the bikes to be catalogued and stored at their sprawling resort in Baclayon. So when the container finally arrived and the first bicycle unloaded, there was much cause for celebration indeed.

Joel’s team is now in the homestretch of preparations before the official program launch on Dec. 4. The training track is being laid out, the bikes are being indexed, minor repairs being done, and interviews with prospective recipients are taking place. He has even involved the Recreational Outdoor Xchange (ROX), whose branches at Bonifacio High Street in Taguig, the Marquee Mall in Pampanga, and at Ayala Center Cebu serve as reception centers for donations of old school shoes and rubber shoes for the schoolchildren of Baclayon. Free toys will be given to the first 100 children who donate their old shoes.

Since everybody gave their services for free, as well as taking time off from work, Joel also enlisted the support of friends in Manila to provide meals and drinks, along with other much needed assistance for the volunteers. Credit easily goes to Destileria Limtuaco for bottled water; Del Monte for fruit juices; Gaita Fores, Colin Mackay, Myrna Segismundo, Athena & Banns Mendoza, Cecile Chang Ysmael, Bea Zobel Jr., Yvette Lee, Elaine Kumble, Junior Master Chef Kyle Imao, as well as La Salle Greenhills Batch 74 alumni. Countless others who have given of their time, effort, and energy may remain nameless, but their contributions are just as valuable.

Each of the used bikes that has traveled the world to get to Baclayon has a story of its own. One took on a grueling AIDS fundraising drive. There is one that was ridden by newlyweds, another that was used on a cross-country tour of Europe, and a smaller one that a young boy spotted behind a Christmas tree and gleefully drove through the snow. But the stories that the bikes will take on after being received by underprivileged schoolchildren in Bohol will be entirely new adventures worthy of retelling for generations to come.      

Riding on a global program where clutter turns into things coveted, Joel had the vision of seeing how simple bicycles could possibly transform lives, and in the long run, make things easier for poor families in remote parts of the country. Friends and advocates continue to pitch in, foremost of whom are Esguerra and the Grant couple who continue to seek donations in the US. Already, there are about 200 more bicycles from Dallas waiting to be shipped. And with word of this social action program spreading virally through social networking sites, it will not be long perhaps before kids who grew up and studied in the Philippines join the bandwagon and give back for the sake of educating the underprivileged. 

It has taken a circuitous route to launch Bikes for the Philippines, and more specifically Bikes for Bohol, but Joel Uichico is used to uphill climbs. Angkas na!    

To donate bicycles, helmets, bike parts and even educational materials, call Joel Uichico at 0917-6307111 or email [email protected]