I'm too cynical to advocate for or against the NGO itself on account of not having researched it enough, It's founded by the SRAM owners (that being a bicycle parts corporation) and they have a for-profit subsidiary which just sells you that bike, but they claim some of it goes towards the actual charity. Seems an ok model.

But the idea seems, genuinely, pretty good. You give someone a rugged-ass bicycle that can be fixed via local parts instead of some dependance on anything else, they now have a pretty good bicycle and boy does that beat walking. Forgive me the obvious bias here but it feels, at least theoretically, pretty Sankara-esque, it's just instead of a tractor, it's a bicycle. Different use-case, same philosophy.

Especially that 100kg carry capacity rear rack, I mean goddamn. Most "adventure" bikes you can customer purchase in the west end at around 40 - 50kg on that front. Kind of want one now.

According to their own numbers they've given out 752.000 bicycles at about 150€ a pop.

EDIT: It also comes very close to the Apocalypse Bicycle that I posted about as the Humanitarian Bicycle idea about 2 years ago and that was from some guy just designing it for fun

What do we think?

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[–] blobjim@hexbear.net 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Depends on whether or not they're doing it to be a loss leader and put local competitors out of business by flooding the market. This has happened with things like shoes from Nike, and food of course. Imagine trying to compete as a bike-maker with free bicycles from an international western company.