Summer (Bike) Fun: Kids’ Bike Camp

Guest post by Melinda Musser, Communications and Marketing Manager for the Community Cycling Center in Portland, Ore. (Photos by Tyler Bertrum)

Each summer, kids flock to the Community Cycling Center’s shop with their bikes, imaginations, and goals to expand their geographic and personal horizons.

Our Bike Camp program teaches safety, group riding technique, right of way, and basic, hands-on maintenance skills. But the biggest lesson is the empowerment kids receive from a summer adventure on two wheels.

Last year, the Community Cycling Center piloted two new camps: Crafty Cruisers and Spanish Immersion. The Crafty Cruisers explore the possibilities of incorporating bike parts into creative art projects, like bike tear-downs, creating cog-stencils, and customized tool creation. The Spanish Immersion Camps are a fun setting for campers to develop their cycling and language skills simultaneously.

Meanwhile, middle schoolers explore Portland’s food culture in the Foodcart Freewheelers Camp or try their hands in wrenching bikes and meeting local bike builders in our Mechanics Camp.

These themed camps have proven quite popular. We expanded our program offerings in 2015, to ensure more than 600 kids will have the opportunity to experience our Bike Camp program and engage with our community partners in the bicycle industry.

We are committed to providing Bike Camp scholarships for families with limited financial opportunities. Our goal in 2015 is to provide 30 full-tuition scholarships throughout 12weeks of Bike Camp. Twenty of the scholarships will include an earn-a-bike option in which the children will receive a newly refurbished bicycle, lock, and tools to take home at the end of camp.

Bike Camp scholarships, coupled with our other Earn a Bike programs, ensures that more children have access to the benefits of bicycling here in Portland.

Learn more about the Community Cycling Center and the Bike Camp program at CommunityCyclingCenter.org