A touching initiative that has got the world’s most elite Davos delegates navigating the Alpine village on foot this year. Ruth-Anne Renaud explains the Davos Challenge that is looking to raise 2,500 bicycles for rural South African school children who can walk up to six kilometres a day to get to school. The bicycles have an immeasurable impact on the lives of the families who are recipients of World Bicycle Relief, and it seems that Davos’ delegates have taken to the challenge with gusto. – LF
ALEC HOGG:  Ruth-Anne Renaud is with us. You guys pulled off something of a coup, getting most people in Davos to wear all these little wristbands, which measures how much we walk and one does walk a lot at the World Economic Forum. How did you pull it off?
RUTH-ANNE RENAUD:  Indeed. This is turning out to be a wonderful initiative that you UBS created and invited World Bicycle Relief to come alongside with them, and the World Economic Forum created this program called the Davos Challenge.
ALEC HOGG:Â But how did you pull it off?
RUTH-ANNE RENAUD: How we pulled it off, was really, me taking the proposal to the World Economic Forum and presenting to them the idea of engaging the delegates in the issue of education that so many people care about, but highlighting an aspect of that. The invisible barrier of distance – by inviting the participants to walk the distance that many children in rural South Africa walk each day, to get to school – six kilometres.
ALEC HOGG: I like it because we’re South Africans. You’re doing it for South Africa and many people forget that South Africa does have a lot of poverty in the rural areas, but why did you decide to choose my country?
RUTH-ANNE RENAUD: We decided to choose your country. It’s one of the areas in which Worldwide Bicycle Relief has our operations and assembling and distribution facilities and it’s an area of great need. We look for three factors when we are doing our programs: need, which clearly exists in South Africa, working with strong field partners, and the ability to be able to scale a program to be able to have a measurable impact.
ALEC HOGG:Â How many of these did you distribute?
RUTH-ANNE RENAUD:Â We distributed all 1000 of them in the first day-and-a-half of the program.
ALEC HOGG: And how has it been going? Are people perhaps walking a bit more than they have been because, like me, they want to contribute to giving a bicycle to a needy cause?
RUTH-ANNE RENAUD: Based on the people that are stopping by our information kiosk to check on their distance and to see what they’ve done, and to then understand how many bicycles that is translating into – I’d say that there’s very strong interest.
ALEC HOGG:Â How many bicycles might you get?
RUTH-ANNE RENAUD:Â The goal is 2500.
ALEC HOGG: And what does that do? Just help us because reading through the material beforehand; there are practical impacts for a child going to school, for an entrepreneur. What kind of a multiplier effect might this have?
RUTH-ANNE RENAUD: There is the immediate and short-term benefit of the students receiving the bicycles and entrepreneur or healthcare worker receiving it, but there’s the long-term benefits as well. You see that for every bicycle provided to the student, we really look at the impact being the equivalent of benefitting a family of five. The student uses the bike to go to school. A mother may be able to use the bike to take a child to the healthcare clinic. The father may take the bike to use it to transport product to market on a non-school day and so collectively, the family is benefitting from the use of the bicycle with the primary purpose being for that student to be able to get to and from school each day – quicker and ready to learn.
ALEC HOGG:Â What happens to the bicycles after the student graduates?
RUTH-ANNE RENAUD: The way our program is designed, it’s actually a ‘study to own’ contract that the student signs, along with their parent or guardian. We come into the community. We establish what’s called a Bicycle Supervisory Committee so we’re engaging with the local leaders from the school, from the community, from the family, and even student representation on that committee, to identify the number of students who live the greatest distance from the school. In essence, those that are typically, an hour or more away – usually, at least 50 percent of that student population. We generally deploy 200 bicycles per school. The committee chooses and in that process, 70 percent of the bicycles are targeted to girl students.
ALEC HOGG: Well, I can’t wait to go and see some of these. Ruth-Anne, thank you. It’s a wonderful initiative and the fact that it benefits South Africa… You have the elite of the elite walking the streets of Davos rather than taking cabs and limousines, helping rural South African ladies – young girls, rather – get a little foot ahead, is just great stuff. Thank you.
RUTH-ANNE RENAUD:Â Thank you.
