What We Do
Our Mission
Dong Ngo’s Cycling Pals was founded in 2011 to honor our pal Dong Ngo, who always liked seeing kids on bikes. Our mission is to encourage kids to lead active and healthy lives through the joy of riding a bike. The bicycle is a great way to encourage kids to enjoy time outdoors, be healthy, and respect the planet.
Our target population is Title-1 schools with a free and reduced lunch population of 85%. We co-host Bicycle events that includes a health theme. Dong Ngo’s Cycling Pals brings bikes, helmets, and locks for raffle giveaway. We set up a mechanics station and skills course. The hosting school sets up stations that promote healthy eating and living habits.
The bicycle is a great way to encourage kids to enjoy time outdoors, be healthy, and respect the planet.
Dong Ngo's Cycling Pals partners with schools to put on bicycle events with a health and wellness theme.
We want to help kids learn how to lead a healthy life style by being active and eating healthy. Many of the schools we partner with have school gardens and promote healthy eating habits. We ask them to set up stations that help teach kids the importance of being active and healthy eating. Healthy children are more active and productive in school.
DCP encourages kids to be active by riding a bike. We provide free bike repair, safety checks on all bikes, set up a skills course, and giveaway bicycles and accessories. By repairing kid’s bikes we’re helping to assure they keep riding. The number one reason kids do not ride their bike is a flat tire. To help with this one of our members runs an after-school program. This program helps to teach kids basic bike maintenance and how to fix a flat.
Our safety and skills course helps to assure kids ride safe and develop their confidence to keep riding. Our giveaways help to put bikes, helmets, and locks in hands of kids who may not have either.
Our events always include education stations. At sign-in, kids receive a passport to be completed by visiting the different stations. To complete their passport kids go to each station and get their passport stamped once they have completed it. The different stations are bicycle safety check, skills course, helmet fitting, and stations with healthy snacks. We've added a blender bike where kids can make smoothies using healthy ingredients. Some schools promote physical activities throughout their stations with games such as Sharks and Minos.
A completed passport is a raffle ticket for chance to win a bicycle. Each bicycle includes a helmet and lock. Helmets and locks are given with each bike to encourage safety and security. The numbers of bikes, helmets, locks, and lights given away at each event is determined by availability of funds.
Since our inception, we have given…
1,400
400 helmets and locks
Our Impact
Our efforts are helping to get kids out and be active. The free bike repair we offer at our event is having a positive impact in the communities we visit, by helping to assure kids keep riding on. We know we make a difference by the increase in the number of bikes in the bike racks at schools where we’ve held events. At each school we visit we co-host events for 3 years then choose a different school. This helps to spread the love of the bike and reach more kids.
We are seeing our raffled bikes coming back for repair meaning kids are riding them and bikes coming back for service need less work because of our previous visit. We also see that kids who come back year after year are riding their bike with more confidence. Our volunteer mechanics assure all bikes brought for repair are fixed correctly and safe to ride.
Since our inception, we have given 150-new bikes, 600 helmets and locks, and have repaired over 1,400 bicycles. Through our safety and skills course we are helping to assure kids ride safe and have more confidence on the bike.
Since our first event we've made improvements on our safety and skills course to help teach bicycle handling skills, and stress the importance of riding safe by obeying traffic laws and wearing a helmet. We have improved our flow of getting kids bikes quickly repaired, with more mechanics and a triage area. This has helped get kids quicker to the skills course. Also, we have become better equipped with parts to repair almost any bike that come to us. We’ve improved on helping schools to decide on different types of stations that promote health by providing healthy snacks, and physical activities, Some school offer a license plate station where kids make a personalized license plate for their bike.
We partner with Title 1 schools that have an 80% or higher free and reduced lunch population. The schools we target are in low income neighborhoods, and they set up stations that have a health and wellness theme. We want to promote an active and healthy life style. Our organization sets-up a mechanic station maned by 6-8 mechanics per event. We bring all parts and supplies to repair almost any bike that comes to us. We also set up a skills course to help kids learn safe riding skills. Dong Ngo's Cycling Pals bring bikes to raffle off. Each bike raffled comes with a helmet and lock.
