RIDING TO NATURE
https://www.giveback.co.il/project.aspx?id=454&lan=en-US
The "Bicycle to Nature" Club
نادي الدرجات "الركوب في احضان الطبيعة"
To help Create a better future for our children.
The Ramat Eshkol neighborhood in Lod can be a tough place to grow up, but there are many great people working hard to make the neighborhood a better place to live.
Almost three years ago, we started the Green Branch Project in the elRazi elementary school in Ramat Eshkol - Lod. It all started when three brave women from NAAM (Arab Women Empowerment NGO in Lod) whose love of plants and nature initiated a project to work with kids in creating a garden at the local school. The green work was great for the kids and and together we have created a wonderful sustainable garden. The kids decided to call our project “The Green Branch”.
The idea of creating a Bicycle club arose from young Muhammad who fixes bikes for the other neighborhood kids. Abir, Muhammad ’s mother, thought it would be a perfect idea to start a bike club and connect the kids with nature. Mike Leiter, a longtime volunteer neighborhood, adds: "Ben Shemen Forest is just four kilometers away from the neighborhood, and has 65 kilometers of trails for bicycling through beautiful landscapes. The forest attracts thousands of cyclists from around the country, but for children of the neighborhood, the forest could be on another planet." Judy Halper a resident of Kibbutz Gezer and a partner in the project has contributed to the construction of a small bicycle repair workshop that we installed in the school.
We have two goals:
Connecting our kids to the challenge of bicycling in nature.
Training teenagers to run a bicycle repair shop.
The kids are looking forward to riding out to the forest on bicycles.
We believe that our project will succeed and expand so that more and more inner city youth of Lod will bicycle out to nature and open up to a better future.
We started operating in early July 2017.
We have two groups with 15 participants in each group.
One group for children in grades 5 and 6.
One group for teenagers.
The youth really like it.
The club operates within the framework of the Arab-Jewish Center in Chicago, Ramat Eshkol Lod.
Sincerely.
Yehiel Mike Leiter
Chairman of RA "Riding to Nature".
Phone: 972-505581275
yehielmikeleiter@gmail.com