Earn a Bike
A bike of their own starts with knowing how it works.
Earn a Bike teaches students ages 7–17 to rebuild a bike from the frame up. They keep the finished bike and a helmet.
Kids need a bike they can ride and repair.
One in three Detroit households has no car. A bike can give a student another way to get to school, but getting a bike is only part of that. A flat tire or a brake that needs adjusting can put it out of use. Knowing how to make those repairs helps a young rider keep the bike ready for the next trip. A student needs a bike they can keep running.
Earn a Bike puts students in the shop with a frame to build from and a bike to work toward. They learn by doing the repairs that keep it rolling, from fixing flats to adjusting gears. When the work is done, they keep the bike and a helmet. Your gift helps a rider leave with transportation they have worked on themselves and repair skills they can keep using.
Skills become a bike of your own
Earn a Bike turns riding skills into bike ownership and repair practice. Operation Rack & Roll provides school parking, and Bike Bus helps students start using their bikes for the trip to class.
- Stride & Glide
- Safety Town
- Earn a Bike
- Rack & Roll
- Bike Bus
How Earn a Bike works
Start with a frame
Students ages 7–17 rebuild a bike from the frame up over a run of shop sessions.
Repair tires and brakes
Shop sessions teach students to fix flats and work on brakes as they rebuild the bike they will keep.
Adjust gears and wheels
Students learn derailleur indexing and wheel truing, working on the parts that keep gears shifting and wheels running straight.
Keep the finished bike
Students take home the bike they rebuild and a helmet, with repair skills learned during the shop sessions.
Donate to Earn a Bike
Your gift helps pay for a rider's shop sessions, a bike to rebuild and a helmet to keep.
Help a young rider build a bike to keep.
Just getting started
Goal $20,000
A School Cohort
$20,000
A whole cohort of twenty-five riders, bikes and helmets included.
Costs shown are estimates while we finalise per-school pricing.
Gifts go to the program named here wherever possible. Where that program is not yet running, your gift goes to the area of greatest need.