Walking for Rural SA Education – one bicycle at a time

By Alec HoggWalking for SA Rural Education

The World Economic Forum’s credo is “committed to improving the state of the world.” Most of the time that’s done though doing the heavy lifting research on complex, intellectual issues. But there is also a more practical side.

Last year each participant in Davos was invited to sign up for a Jawbone device. I got mine and until recently losing the charging attachment (damn…) used it pretty religiously. In its most basic form, the Jawbone measures your daily walking and sleeping. It certainly helped me become much more aware of exercise and rest.

This year the WEF has another health enhancing project. One gets to walk a lot in Davos. Although there’s an ever circulating army of mini-buses, unless you’re going to venues of the extremes of the town, it’s quicker to walk. There’s even greater encouragement to foot-it this year. Especially for South Africans.

The pre-conference material encourages the signing up for pedometers. For each six kilometres walked, sponsor UBS and World Bicycle Relief (WBR) will give bicycle to a schoolchild in rural South Africa. I cover at least 6km a day in Davos so that should be four bicycles from yours truly for deserving kids. But after reading about WBR, I’ll be trying to push it a little more this year.

It’s an excellent example of a social responsibility programme that works for everyone. WBR was started by SRAM, the second largest bicycle component business in the world and is run by FK Day, brother to the group’s founder Stan Day. WBR operates in eight African countries and has donated more than 220 000 bicycles to date. It has 100 employees and an expense budget of $10m a year, mostly for bicycles and spares.

The project has a practical impact. WBR research that is easy to believe tellus us each bicycle donated to a child in rural Africa results, on average, in 28% higher attendance at school and 59% higher grades. Anyone who has experienced the draining effect of walking extended distances in the African heat should quickly appreciate these averages are realistic.

For entrepreneurs, WBR says, a bicycle gives them the capacity to carry five times as much; travel four times as far; and save three hours for every 10 miles travelled. Taken together, the humble two wheeler translates into a 50% profit uplift.

In conjunction with BrightRock, we have taken to sharing the stories from our recently published World Economic Forum starter pack PDF, ‘A Veterans Guide to Surviving Davos’  with you – Follow the link to download the full document.

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