Mountain Biking Meets Inner City Youth

Seeing the Future from Above

For many youth, especially those from low income families living in the inner city, access to riding a bike, and outdoor pursuits in general, is limited. Marilyn Price struggled with this reality and turned her grappling into what is today a thriving non-profit, Trips for Kids (TFK). The moment of inspiration for Price came mid bike-ride, following the realization that the majority of low income inner city youth living in her city, San Francisco, had never experienced the surrounding wilderness areas, or had the opportunity to see the city they lived in from the hills above.

Marilyn started TFK with ten donated bikes, running the first trips out of her home in 1988. From those grassroots beginnings, TFK has taken off in all directions. The non-profit now has 50 chapters throughout the US and Canada and continues to introduce economically disadvantaged urban youth to mountain biking and the environment.

Trips for Kids Vancouver Style

Like many great West Coast dreams, TFK Vancouver started on a rainy afternoon, in February of 2001. Dana Starritt, along with Guy Patterson and Darcy Carroll, started discussing the possibility of a local chapter of Trips for Kids. Fortunately, unlike so many rainy day plans and good intentions, TFK Vancouver was off the ground by that summer, and has been running ever since.

This year TFK Vancouver is entering its seventh year of summer programming. The Vancouver chapter was the ninth TFK chapter in North America, and the first in Canada. TFK Vancouver has continued to grow every year, increasing the number of trips and kids involved. Starritt recalls, “Initially, TFK needed to recruit youth to participate in the program, focusing on kids in the Downtown Eastside. But by the second year, TFK already had more interest than we had [capacity] and there was no longer a need for outreach.” In 2004 the Vancouver chapter started hiring summer staff, to facilitate the actual bike trips, leaving Starritt and the co-founders time to manage the scheduling, programming, and everything else that goes along with running a grassroots non-profit.

Today, the program consists of four rides a week for eight weeks, from the last week of June to the last week of August; over 200 kids participate. TFK Vancouver provides the kids with all that they need for the day, from everything bike-related to a healthy lunch. Most excursions run as days trips. Typical destinations range from the Delta Watershed to the Seymour Demonstration Forest, and a few times a season, TFK is able to do overnight trips to Squamish or Pemberton.

The philosophy of the Vancouver chapter is clearly stated on their website as supporting “personal responsibility, achievement, and environmental awareness through the development of practical skills and the simple
act of having fun.” Starritt says, “Embedded in each outing are elements of teaching leadership skills, enabling empowerment, and with every trip there is a focus on environmental education, usually integrated as a game or activity such as nature treasure hunt.”

She continues, “The youth who participate in the outings are never divided into skill levels or ability groupings. It’s rewarding to see them supporting each other, and the encouragement that is shown to those who are struggling is inspiring. Some of these kids have never been outside of Vancouver, and some have never been on bikes, so just seeing their reactions is rewarding.” Starritt explains the program goes beyond the individual child and aspires to promote practicing responsibility on many levels. “Another dimension we try to highlight is illustrating that as bikers, the kids are part of a community that they need to give back to, and so, for example, we are trying to get them involved in trail maintenance.”

Beyond the Biking

For Price, and the Vancouver chapter founders, TFK started with a belief that outdoor recreation should be accessible for all youth, along with an intimate knowledge of the benefits and challenges that being active in the outdoors brings. If recent research findings are any indication, these implicit benefits of being active are becoming increasingly important. In March of this year, American and Canadian researchers announced that for the first time ever, this generation of youth will not live longer than their parents. The main cause of this is obesity. In most areas of North America the highest rates of childhood obesity are seen among low income groups living in cities, and the relationship of activity and health is clear.

For the so called Media or M-Generation, the need for increasing physical activity is greater than ever as it continues to be overshadowed by the amount of time spent exposed to various forms of electronic media. The Kaiser Family Foundation (a non-profit group that studies health policy) found that the average exposure to various forms of media (including video games, TV and Internet) is approaching six hours per day. Similar research conducted by the Canadian office of the World Health Organization reports that the average Canadian child spends in excess of three hours a day watching TV, and that low income youth in urban areas tend to be at the top of this measure.

Bike to the Future

Despite the success of the Vancouver chapter, Starritt is quick to point out that the largely volunteer driven organization faces ongoing challenges. Dana explains, “one of the challenges is volunteers. We are somewhat limited by the Monday to Friday schedule of our programming, and although currently we run TFK as a free program, one of our greatest barriers is that we do not currently have a van for transporting the youth.” Dana explains that this means they cannot provide the transportation to get groups of youth to the trail head, which can often be a challenge for the most in-need youth organizations.

Overall, Starritt seems excited about the future of Trips for Kids. “This year, for the first time, we have hired a full time program manager, with the hope that the program will gain greater continuity and be able to continue expanding in capacity. Eventually we’d like to start running Trips for Kids in the winter, things like snowshoeing trips and whatnot.” Ultimately, she explains, “it would be great to get to the point where there is a full loop, wherein youth who participate in the program have the opportunity to become mentors/volunteers in later years.” If successful in this, Starritt hopes that TFK will continue to allow more and more children access to the activity and to the wilderness that is so easy – especially in Vancouver – to take for granted.