Bikes For Kids

This is our fifth-annual participation in the program, providing bicycles and helmets for children in the county. To date we've provided more than two-hundred bicyclces and helmets for children from families without enough money for presents during the holdiay season.

This year we're providing more than one-hundred kids bikes, that's up more than double last year. But we desperately need your help. We can't provide bikes without the financial means to do so. On average it costs us $50 to buy a brand new bike and provide a helmet. Local shops donate the time to assemble the bikes, and local delivery companies give us the trucks we need to transport them to People to People. It's truly a group effort, but it can't happen without your help.

Please, click the link below to visit our online donations page and give to this important project. Every bit helps bring a brand new bicycle to a child in Rockland this holiday season.

We're making it possible for Lensmasters to donate directly. Until we finish, 100% of the cash raised by this lens will be donated to the Bike For Kids program. Fund-raising capitalizes on the essential decency of the human condition, and that, as human beings, one of our greatest needs is to contribute.

Indelibly etched in my mind is the morning I received my first bike. A few weeks earlier my father interviewed my brother and I about what we'd want in a bike. Color, seat, etc. All the details. We had no idea he wasn't just making conversation.

For some short period of time my father worked in a bike store as a kid, and so he bought two purple, banana seated, sissy barred, one gear wonders and assembled them in the basement.

My parents still have pictures of the delight we felt when they were presented to us that special evening.

It comes as little surprise to me that bikes are the most requested gift from little ones. They provide freedom, exercise, exhiliration, and fun. They can teach responsibility, care, and provide the opportunity for social interaction when ridden in a group. They can help one get to school faster, and home faster, or off for a joy ride with ones friends.

Bikes are magic to children. They feel the wind in their hair, the woosh of speed, and the fun of balancing. For some of us, that magic is never lost. I'm one of those. This season alone I've ridden almost 1000 miles while caring for Noah, my 16 month old son, working, and enjoying a full life. Besides riding just for fun and health, there's also errands and other tasks that help reduce my use of gasoline, which these days amounts to serious savings for the household budget.

When possible I try to work with local organizations, simply because "Charity begins at home." It makes sense to help build the community in which I live, though there certainly isn't anything wrong helping the larger foundations and charities.

So it with great understanding that I work to bring bikes to kids who otherwise might not get them, and hope that you'll help me do so by donating whatever you can and helping us all even as you do so.