Free Bikes 4 Kidz Madison, a local, non-profit organization on a mission to provide bikes to all individuals in Dane County who wouldn’t otherwise have access to them, has a new name and an enhanced mission.
The organization announced on Tuesday that they will now be called Bikes for Kids Wisconsin and is expanding its mission from the standalone bike giveaway program to increasing bicycle-based transportation for everyone through access, low-cost sales and service, and education.
“We are incredibly grateful to Free Bikes 4 Kidz for bringing a chapter to Wisconsin and providing us with this launch pad. It’s helped us get to where we are today and we are excited to take this positive impact to the next level,” said Kristie GoForth, executive director of Bikes for Kids Wisconsin in a press release.
Free Bikes 4 Kidz Madison was a chapter of the national Free Bikes 4 Kidz organization with more than 15 chapters nationwide. The mission of Free Bikes 4 Kidz is to give away free bicycles through a 10-week program that collects unwanted bicycles, saves them from the landfill, refurbishes them, and then gives them away to children through distribution partners including other charitable organizations and public schools. Free Bikes 4 Kidz Madison held its first bike giveaway in Wisconsin in the spring of 2017.
In 2023 they hit several new milestones including giving away their 10,000th bike to Alan, a sophomore at West High School in Madison, and shipping 555 bikes to Ghana through a collaboration with Working Bikes in Chicago and Village Bike Project in Ghana. The organization also held its pilot Bike Mechanics program and its first bike donation drive in Minocqua giving bikes to the Lac du Flambeau Tribe in northern Wisconsin.
