Foundation Report: Clean Commute, Bike Week, Car Free Challenge

This is part of a series, "What has MoBikeFed done for you in 2010?"  Read the remaining articles here. 

This time of year many are asking--what have you been doing?  What have the Federation and the Foundation been doing?

We've put together a multi-part report.  Here is part two--about the activities of the Missouri Foundation for Bicycling and Walking so far this year:

Missouri Foundation for Bicycling and Walking: Recent Activities Summary, Part 2
16 April 2010

Clean Commute, Bike Week,  Car Free Challenge, Bicycle Education

The Foundation is partnering with the City of Kansas City, Missouri, to promote bicycling, walking, and other non-motorized transportation.

The activities for 2010 include organizing and promoting a large regional Bike Week in May, which will have dozens of organizations across the metro area organizing activities that will be coordinated and promoted by the Foundation.

Included will be a Car Free Challenge event that will involve around 1500 participants across the metro area and will be extended year-around for the first time this year.

The partnership with KCMO extends to annual bicycle safety education clinics and other bicycle safety programs that will extend year around.  This Spring the Foundation has hired the region's first full-time bicycle safety educator, who will promote these programs across the metro area as part of the partnership with KCMO but also across the state thanks to his association with the Foundation and funding from MoDOT, the Missouri Foundation for Health (St Louis), and others.

By the way, some of you from across Missouri are asking--why are you as a statewide organization doing a program that is centered only in one part of the state?

A couple of reasons:  You have to be somewhere!  Some programs can be run on a truly statewide basis, but others are very local by their very nature. In Kansas City some group needs to be doing what we are doing, and by stepping up to the plate we have the chance to develop capacity and resources that will help us with our statewide mission as well. 

Even though these program are local in nature, they are only strengthening, not sapping, our statewide capacity. (In fact all the people who are spending time on the KCMO programs are also spending significantly more time over the course of the year on statewide initiatives.  Without the synergy and the funding of both statewide and local we wouldn't be able to bring in the tremendously talented and experienced people we are.)

And the other side of it is that frankly we have had a very difficult time finding sources of funding to do truly statewide programs.  Sometimes you have to go where the funding is and where the needs are.

If it makes you feel better, we will have a staff person on the ground in St Louis starting sometime later this year (if all goes well!).  So we really are working to keep and develop a truly statewide focus--supporting the work that so many groups and organizations are doing around Missouri at the local and metropolitan level.

Your donations power the work of the Foundation . . . 

Join MoBikeFed's Advocacy Network

MoBikeFed is a statewide group of people like you, working together for better bicycling, walking, and trails in Missouri. When you join our advocacy network you receive occasional important advocacy alerts and bicycle, pedestrian, and trails news from around Missouri.

Working together we make a real difference! Join our advocacy network:

Want better bicycling and walking in Missouri?
We rely on the support of members like you.  Please join, renew, or donate today.