A current exhibition at the Cooper-Hewitt in New York focuses on technologies and designers working to benefit the world’s poor. Two bicycles from Xtracycle’s nonprofit sister company Worldbike, the Big Boda and the Worldbike prototype, are on display until October, and will go on tour with the exhibition.
The bicycles are shown alongside a host of effective and innovative poverty-fighting tools, including Kickstart International’s MoneyMaker irrigation pumps, a ceramic water filter from Potters for Peace, and Solar Aid from Godisa technologies, a low-cost, solar-recharged hearing aid. In the outdoor exhibit, the Big Boda is displayed carrying eight Kenyan bread crates, representing one of the most successful target groups in our trial market, bread delivery entrepreneurs. Worldbike's technical lead Ed Lucero traveled to our workshop in March to retrieve the bicycles and to work with our team on a new design, the Chop 'N Drop Worldbike. Lucero and Worldbike's director Paul Freedman attended the opening-week events for the exhibition in early May.
The exhibition’s video and book (available as a thankyou gift to Worldbike donors) also highlight Worldbike’s contributions prominently. And Worldbike has recently appeared in the online versions of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and International Herald Tribune, as well as dozens of newspapers in the Reuters network. Building on this recognition, Worldbike is pulling together resources to conduct our largest test market to date in East Africa.
The exhibition is a great milestone for our nonprofit effort. We began as a technology prototyping organization, with roots in Ross Evan’s initial work on extended wheelbase bicycles in Nicaragua in 1994 -- the same invention led to the Xtracycle Sport Utility Bike. As the promise and simplicity of these bikes became more evident, Worldbike began staging small trial markets, reducing the cost of our designs, and sharing our stories and imagery with a growing donor community and the bicycle industry. We set out to inspire the industry to take these billions of bicycle consumers seriously, which it had never done before. After Worldbike concluded our Kenyan test market of the Big Boda, one of the bicycles in the Smithsonian exhibition, Worldbike has advised the industry’s leaders on distributing cargo bikes in Africa. They include Tom Ritchey, one of the fathers of mountain biking, and Craig Calfee, maestro of bamboo and carbon fiber bikes. Other companies, such as Kona Bicycles, are designing simple basic transport bikes for the African market. As these prominent names join the community of people bringing high-quality, load-carrying bicycles to poor countries, we retain our focus on design innovation and addressing the problems of the bicycle distribution system in Africa.
To get involved with Worldbike, check the volunteer opportunities on our web site, www.worldbike.org. To make a tax-deductible donation, follow the “Donate Now” link.
