Our Story
Twin City Bike Collective got its start as a service learning project during the 2017-2018 school year at Summit School. Five Summit 9th grade students and faculty member Chris Culp started by using announcement at Upper School assembly, email and social media to solicit broken and unwanted bikes from individuals. A bike repair work space was created and students worked on repairing bicycles after school and on Saturday mornings. The repaired bikes were donated to a local service organization, Salem Bike Ministry, headed by Phillip Summers. Mr. Summers had been donating bikes in his neighborhood in South East Winston-Salem to people of all ages who could not afford to purchase a bike on their own. Our first goal was to get him 25 bikes, which led to 50 and then 75 that first year.
During the 2018-2019 school year five more 9th graders continued the service learning project and donated additional bikes to Salem Bike Ministry as well as several other charities. Brenner Fit, World Relief, Operation North State and The Children’s home were added to the list of agencies Summit was providing bikes to. Our bike repair area was increased in size to handle the demand. As this project has grown we began exploring the idea of creating a non-profit organization. During the 2019-2020 school year Noah Tyo is taking our first high school class, Innovation and Entrepreneurship #1, and is focusing on creating this non-profit.