New Belgium Supports One Street
Platinum-level Bicycle Friendly Business New Belgium Brewing Company recently invested in One Street’s Social Bike Business Program to bring the program to the Southwestern U.S.
From the press release:
Prescott, Arizona — January 5, 2010 — The New Belgium Brewing Company has invested in an international social bike program to ensure it serves the Southwest of the United States. The Social Bike Business program creates jobs through locally manufactured transportation bicycles for disadvantaged people. Led by One Street, a global bicycle advocacy organization, the program is underway in Prague, Budapest and Los Angeles.
“We are honored to partner with the New Belgium Brewing Company to expand our Social Bike Business program into the Southwest,” said Sue Knaup, Executive Director of One Street. “Their understanding of the enormous impact bicycles can make towards climate improvement and affordable transportation choices, sets them apart.”
About the Social Bike Business Program (from the One Street website):
- One Street’s Social Bike Business program is designed to tackle pervasive poverty as it solves several systemic problems in the bicycle movement, including:
- A lack of affordable, quality, transportation bicycles for environmentally-friendly and sustainable transportation;
- A strong message from disadvantaged people we have met with in the U.S. and in Eastern Europe that they and their neighborhoods are very poorly served by bike shops;
- The trend by the bicycle industry to move all production into Asian factories that engage in environmentally harmful practices and often misuse their workers through low pay, long hours and hazardous working conditions, thus escalating social problems;
- That very few of the factories making bicycles actually serve disadvantage people near the factories;
- That disadvantaged people are the people who can benefit most from affordable, quality, transportation bicycles;
- That this program, through solving the above issues, will offer well-paying jobs, job training and entrepreneurial opportunities for disadvantaged people to lift themselves out of poverty as they bring environmentally sustainable transportation to their cities.
This international program follows the principle of social business that adheres to the proven for-profit structure, but replaces the monetary bottom line with the number of underserved people served by the program. All elements of the program are scrutinized from a business perspective to ensure adequate income in order to serve as many disadvantaged people as possible.
Kudos to New Belgium and One Street!
4 Responses to “New Belgium Supports One Street”
Not to mention the improved self-esteem for the new employees who are again productive. Thanks for posting this!
This is really cool, but they need to edit their press release!
I’m really impressed! Not enough attention is paid to how out of reach our focus on car focused transportation is for low-income and disadvantaged people is. This really is a step in the right direction and New Belgium deserves all the kudos they can get for their support.
Not that I am an expert on this, but I believe there are plenty of bike factories in Taiwan that treat their workers well (though probably plenty are closing due to the competition from China). I think “Asian” here is a euphemism for China. Why not say China, rather than lumping other Asian countries that don’t engage in the same abuse (and/or on the same scale) with them?