Pedals for Progress drive to mark 10th year of collecting used bikes
BY CHRIS MURINO Staff Writer

SOUTH BRUNSWICK - Larry Witlen, a math teacher at South Brunswick High School, has been running the Pedals for Progress program for the past nine years, and this year he is making it 10.

On Saturday, June 7, Witlen, along with the South Brunswick Education Association, will be running his 10th annual collection of used bikes to be donated overseas to people who need them for transportation. The drive will be held from noon to 3 p.m. at South Brunswick High School.

"The guy who started it [Dave Schweidenback] had the idea when he was in the Peace Corps," Witlen said.

Witlen was a former Peace Corps volunteer himself and he brought the idea to New Jersey in 1999. Since then, he said he has collected well over 1,000 bikes, averaging about 100 per collection. He believes that this is a great cause for many reasons.

"Right here, we throw a lot of our bikes into the garbage and they go into our landfills," Witlen said. "It takes a long time for [them] to decompose and go into the earth. Instead, they could be going to somebody who's going to use them."

Witlen said there's a distinct difference between the way bikes are used in the United States and the way they are used in countries overseas.

"In this country, most people use bikes for leisure," Witlen said. "In developing countries, they use it to go to work, to make work. They can get to their job a lot sooner; kids can get to school. Bikes are also nonpolluting."

He also likes that bikes enable less privileged people to help themselves, instead of depending on the aid of others.

"It helps them to pick up their own bootstraps," Witlen said.

According to Witlen, bikes have been sent to more than 60 different countries, including Moldova, Ghana, Uganda, Honduras and Nicaragua.

This will the first yearWitlen has partnered with the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA), of which he is a member. He likes to partner with different organizations, and in the past he has worked with the high school's National Honor Society, as well as its Viking Volunteers. Witlen chose the NJEA this year because he hoped that having representation in each of the schools, not just the high school, would be beneficial for the program.

Witlen would like to hear from some of the people who receive the bikes he collects, but he said this is impossible.

"My bikes go in with somebody else's bikes from another collection," Witlen said.

Despite all of the efforts ofWitlen, Pedals for Progress has seen some difficult times recently. The organization often tries to get grants from large corporations that spend money on "green" projects.

"In some ways, those monies have dried up due to the economic situation," Witlen said.

Witlen also said that shipping costs have skyrocketed because of the increase in diesel fuel costs. To offset this, they try to fit as many bikes as possible into the containers they have, and on a mediumsized U-Haul, they can fit about 120 bikes.

So far this year, at least 40 bikes have been collected. The resources of the town may be dried up a bit this year, after last year's best-ever collection total of 190 bikes. Witlen said this year's collection may not yield as many.

Witlen asks that $10 be given for each bike donated, to be put toward the shipping of the bike. In reality, each bike costs about $35 to ship.

Overall, since the start of the international Pedals for Progress program, more than 112,000 bikes have been donated. So far in 2008, almost 1,500 bikes have been shipped overseas.