Everyone
Deserves A Bike

Pedal It Forward aims to increase access to bicycles for all.

Story and Photography by Kai Caddy

On a gorgeous mid-April early evening at the Springdale Housing Authority apartment complex near downtown, parents and their children lined up eagerly.

Kenny Williams and his crew from Pedal It Forward were unloading and lining up bikes and helmets for about 50 kids.

Williams and his organization were prepping the first of three bike giveaways set to take place at the complex this summer. Last year, Pedal It Forward gave away 3,100 bikes. They’re donated, repaired by volunteers and given back to those who need a bike.

Pedal It Forward’s mission is simple: to increase the number of people who have access to bikes for health, recreation and transportation. The group’s vision is ambitious: Everyone in Northwest Arkansas will have access to a working bicycle.

The organization was founded in 2014 by Bentonville cyclists Gary Vernon, David Tovey and Justin Tubb. The trio had the idea to gather old bikes from neighbors to do a neighborhood giveaway during the holiday season.

“That turned into 40 bikes just that December,” Williams, Pedal It Forward’s executive director, said. “They just did that in their garage and thought, ‘Wow, this could be a thing if we kept asking people for bikes.’ So they did.”

The bikes have never stopped coming. Pedal It Forward has donated more than 10,500 bikes in 10 years. The group expanded to two connected garages and a building next door in Bentonville to house and repair all the donated bikes. Soon after, they added a Rogers location and just last year expanded into Washington County with a shop in Springdale next to the Jones Center.

“We fill up the space at all of them,” Williams said. “We are constantly cramming things in.”

Actual full-time employees came much later, Williams said. The first half of the operation’s life was fully run by volunteers. All of the bike repairs are still done by volunteers — Williams estimates 60 to 80 regular volunteers a year. But Pedal It Forward also hosts groups.

“Just this week, (Operations Manager) Joe (Maneiro) hosted 15 people from Sam’s Club,” Williams said. “Last Saturday, I hosted 10 people from a therapy clinic. And the previous Tuesday, I hosted a group from Walmart, so we have hundreds of groups coming through in one-off capacities that help us a lot.”

Williams wasn’t Pedal It Forward’s first employee, but those hired before him were semi-retired and never intended to make Pedal It Forward a career. But, Williams has jumped at the chance, and has since added Maneiro and Springdale shop manager Justin Thacker as full-time employees.

“We’re three employees strong,” Williams said.

The majority of the group’s bikes still come from individual donations, but Pedal It Forward pulls from various sources.

“We are getting a lot of return bikes from local Walmart Supercenters,” Williams said. “We’re getting them from city parks and recs. We’re getting city police departments calling us with abandoned bikes. We got 16 bikes from Boston Mountain Solid Waste out in Prairie Grove. They’re a brand-new partner. The city of Fayetteville is now collecting for us.”

Occasional bike drives also help keep inventory high. Williams said a neighborhood bike drive can easily result in 40-50 donated bikes. The most success has come from city-wide drives.

“The first one we did was Bella Vista, and we’ve worked with almost every city now,” Williams said. “We almost always pull in more than 100 bikes in a four-hour bike drive. The most recent one we did was in Rogers. We put three trailers at three parks across the city, and I think we pulled in 110 bikes just between 9 and noon.”

Pedal It Forward really shines, though, when the bikes are given away. Most of the bikes are distributed through their Pedal Partners, a collection of nonprofits that pass the bikes on to their clients in need.

“We just dropped 12 bikes at True Self Recovery, which is a really, really good addiction recovery and job placement program,” Williams said. “We keep all their clients on bikes. We give tons of bikes away directly through schools and school counselors. All the homeless shelters, Seven Hills, New Beginnings, the Salvation Army in Bentonville, we keep them on bikes. We partner with the people who help the people who need them.”

The giveaways when the staff and volunteers are present, though, like the one on that April night in Springdale are where Pedal It Forward shines.

“The big kind of celebratory giveaways are special,” Williams said. “We do six or eight of those a year. The big ones are when we go to the big backpack giveaway at Arvest Ballpark and several hundred people come through there. We try to give away at least 100 bikes. We do a big giveaway at the Boys and Girls Club in early December every year.”

The Springdale giveaway was a new project where they brought the bikes directly to the people.

As the crew lined up the bikes and helmets, those in line waited patiently, counting down the time until the giveaway was set to begin at 5:30.

And when 5:30 came, the volunteers and staff walked everyone through their helmet and bike choices. Just 15 minutes later, 50 kids were riding off with big smiles and the mission was complete for the night.

Thacker said he hoped for similar crowds, if not bigger, at the next two giveaways at the apartment complex.

“We believe everyone deserves a bike,” Williams said. “It’s just a bike, right? Like, we’re not feeding people. We’re not fixing people. But we believe in the power of bikes to be both preventative and a solution for a lot of people’s problems, or the power that the joy of having a bike to get to wherever you’re going, or just for fun, can be. We don’t say you have to need transportation as an adult to get a bike. If you can’t afford a bike, but you just want a bike to put a smile on your face, you’re qualified.”