Our staff has been quite busy, to say the least, over the past six days as close to 600 Indianapolis Public Schools students at four different schools have participated in our unique and engaging Kids Riding Bikes programming in either their traditional physical education class or after school program.
Our journey started on Wednesday, May 3rd, as we wrapped up our three days of programs at Merle Sidener Gifted Academy; the first IPS school that we delivered our programming to back in 2012 and that’s been a reoccurring school site of ours ever since. We had the privilege of getting all of the youth at Sidener on our bikes and enjoyed the opportunity to reconnect with many of the youth that we’ve worked with before. On that same day as our staff was winding programs at Sidener, another part of our staff was on their way to Meredith Nicholson School 96 to setup for a brand new after school program called, “RightFit,” a partnership between IPS and the Indianapolis Indians. The “RightFit” program combines food, fitness, and mentoring to help hundreds of IPS students. The students also get to hang out with local police officers, firefighters, college students, and members of the National Guard.
After an eventful Wednesday, our team still wasn’t done serving the youth of Indianapolis as we spent our day Thursday getting Kids Riding Bikes at Clarence Farrington School 61 on the west side of Indianapolis. This is our second stint working with the youth at 61 and we’re looking forward to spending the next four weeks working with all of their incredible youth and teachers.
We concluded our week at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway as we volunteered to help setup for Rev Indy, which is Methodist Health Foundation’s marquee event to raise funds to provide support for Indiana University Health Statewide Trauma program. After assisting with Rev on Friday, our team hit the ground running on Monday as we brought Kids Riding Bikes to the youth of Thomas D. Gregg School 15 for the second time. We’ll be here the entirety of this week getting all of their students on our bicycle simulators and educating them on the countless reasons physical fitness, in addition to life skills such as teamwork, hard work, and determination, are important to their overall health and well-being.
It’s been a joy and honor for our staff to excite the youth of our city on physical fitness and living an active and healthy lifestyle. Cultivating relationships and bonds with the students is something that we enjoy doing each and every single day we get Kids Riding Bikes. Cycling as a form of leisure, transportation, recreation, and sport are all growing in our city and we love highlighting to the kids how valuable of a tool it can be to them not only now, but as they grow into adulthood.