By Christy Cowley, Executive Director
It has been a tsunami of activity in the shop this past month with all of the volunteers helping us meet our goal of restoring 75+ kid bikes for the upcoming holiday season. Since October we have had nine work parties with seven more scheduled – so the job will get done!
The work parties are full, but we’ll need help Dec. 12-13 distributing bikes.
To date we have 400 hours logged in volunteer time, a 100% increase in productivity compared to a ‘normal’ month at Sharing Wheels. COVID adjustments were made (reduced number of people at each work party and allowed volunteers to take bikes home to fix) and they appear to be working just fine.
So, thank you to all of you who have answered the call to help get bikes ready for kids in need this holiday season. There are so many community members to thank for all the recent efforts.
A special shout out to the following:
Everett Sail & Power Squadron who kindly donated 14 brand new kid bikes to our Holiday Give Away program. Our volunteers will get those bikes built and ready for holiday distribution to low/no income families.
Officer Robert Peterson of the Redmond Police Department who picked up our most challenging kid bikes for the Redmond Officer Bike Team to repair.
Mike D. and Greg M. for storing all of our finished kid bikes. If you have been to the shop lately, you know we are buried in bikes so having the finished bikes stored safely and securely off site has been a huge relief.
And thank you Larry W. and Mike D. for transporting bikes to our off-site storage!
Bruce M. and Tony S. for hosting our Tuesday/Thursday night work parties. Thank you both for taking the lead and mentoring the volunteers of all skill levels.
And finally…thank you to Alain Cansino, our shop manager, and our only in-shop paid employee. In addition to managing the everyday operations at Sharing Wheels, he has done an outstanding job of quality checking every kid bike and ensuring we have all the parts in stock to keep this important community project moving forward.
Bruce M. hosts weekly work parties. 
Father and son work on a bike this fall. 
Tony S. is a long-time volunteer.