Childhood: Give a Kid Wheels, Not Another Screen
by Amanda Robinson at The Lightfoot Initiative
Biking is one of life’s great joys because once you’re confident on two wheels you have opportunities. Biking teaches balance, risk, independence and resilience. All the things we say we want for our kids, then quietly design out of their lives.
Fewer children are learning to ride than a generation ago. In New Zealand, car ownership is a rite of passage, and we lead the world in it. Have we considered the consequences? Streets that once belonged to kids now belong to traffic. The slow creep of 4WDs has replaced scraped knees and shouted goodbyes as kids hoon off to school on their bikes. To be fair, in Queenstown traffic often crawls slowly enough that you can sail past it on a bike, which says a lot about both our congestion and our missed opportunities.
For decades, the Wakatipu Toy Library has been a quiet backbone of childhood opportunity. For many local kids, their first wheels came not from a shop, but from the Toy Library. Trikes, balance bikes, pedal bikes, scooters and other wonderfully strange two-or-three-wheeled contraptions with no obvious purpose except fun. All of them helped kids build confidence before the moment that really matters, owning a bike that is theirs alone.
However, that success has created a problem. The Toy Library bike fleet has grown so large and is so well used that maintaining it has become too much for a volunteer-run organisation. Rather than letting those bikes slowly stop pedalling, the Toy Library has gifted the fleet of 50 kid’s bikes to OneBike.
We see it as 50 chances at freedom.
Lightfoot is creating a dedicated space for these bikes at the OneBike Hub in Frankton. We’ll have a kids’ coordinator to match bikes to children and make sure they are safe, fitted and ready to ride. What we need now is help from the community to finish the job.
Our Give the Gift of Wheels campaign is partway to its $20,000 goal. If you believe kids should have access to bikes, not just screens and back seats, we’re asking you to donate.
Because a childhood without wheels is a missed opportunity. And as a community I know we can do better than that.
Donate at: givealittle.co.nz/cause/give-the-gift-of-wheels-this-christmas-fund
Follow Lightfoot for information on Kid’s Learn to Ride courses and much more: www.facebook.com/lightfootinitiative
