Paul Fitzgerald   General Manager, Working Bikes   “The purpose of the organization is to rescue underutilized or unused bicycles from the waist stream and redistribute them in both local and global communities as tools of empowerment. &amp;nbsp;As a lifelong Chicagoan and lifelong Southsider, I’ve found a bicycle to be an empowering way to travel. &amp;nbsp;As a young adult, I learned how to maintain it myself. &amp;nbsp;By being able to be active and an active part of the community that I was traveling through or going to or living in, I found bicycles to be a good fit for me personally…For people coming to Working Bikes, there’s three main ways that people interact with us: we have volunteers, we have donors, and we have customers or clients. &amp;nbsp;The donors give us all the old bikes or anything bicycling related they no longer want. &amp;nbsp;We collect between 8,000 and 10,000 bikes a year. &amp;nbsp;In 2015, we collected 9,100 bikes. &amp;nbsp;Of those, 6,000 were shipped to projects all around the world. &amp;nbsp;Our biggest partners the last two years are in El Salvador, Zambia, and Ghana. &amp;nbsp;This year we’re going to be donating more than 1,500 bikes locally. &amp;nbsp;Our clients for our Cycle of Power programs, our local donation program for adults, some of them are in transitional housing, some of them are currently living on the street but receiving services somewhere else, some of them are Medicaid recipients whose doctors say they need to be more active for their health, some of them are youth programs from Bikes N’ Roses in Albany Park to Blackstone Bicycle Works in Woodlawn, some of them are refugees – we work with a lot refugee resettlement groups, and also ex-offender reentry. &amp;nbsp;Our kids’ bikes donation program is called Cycle of Peace. &amp;nbsp;We gave away 500 bikes with locks and helmets through the North Lawndale Restorative Justice Hub. &amp;nbsp;That was in June. &amp;nbsp;We did another Cycle of Power/Cycle of Peace collaboration with St. Sabina in Auburn-Gresham over Labor Day Weekend…Our customers are who financially support our mission. &amp;nbsp;About 95% or our budget is made up of customer interaction. &amp;nbsp;We sell about 1,800 refurbished bikes a year right here at 24th and Western…The volunteers do a lot of the heavy lifting for both our international shipments and for our local donations. &amp;nbsp;Anybody can come in and volunteer. &amp;nbsp;On Thursday evenings, we have a volunteer session which is open for women and transgender people exclusively. &amp;nbsp;Sometimes the bike shop can be a little disempowering to somebody who has not been around, for whatever reason, tools or does not feel entitled to come in, so we make sure it’s a safe place for women and transgender place to develop these skills too. &amp;nbsp;Volunteers don’t need any prerequisites. &amp;nbsp;Most people come in here with no experience on bikes, and they hopefully leave with some.”