Media
Foundation News, Events, and Press Releases
Recent News
6.04.08 | Children's bike clinic helps to repair a community.
Julie Rodda is the Children's Program Director at the Living Water Church in Billings and the main coordinator of the church's South Billings Annual Bike Clinic. She also happens to be a professional grant writer. Through her work maintaining a continuous grant for foster kids through Forever Families Kidz Connection program, she knew about the Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation, a long-time supporter of Kidz Connection. The church's successful bike clinic was growing in popularity with in-kind donations of bike parts and repair manpower, but the program needed a more reliable cash flow to ensure its success in the coming years.
"The Foundation ended up awarding three times what we originally asked for," said Rodda of the grant received. The Foundation also challenged her to get multi-year commitments from the program's current donors as well as greater involvement from the community to put on the event. "Because of the Foundation grant, other civic organizations that heard about it wanted to get involved."
In it's fourth year, the South Billings Annual Bike Clinic is a one-day event where any child can bring his or her bicycle to the church and received the repairs needed to get it up and running. Each year depending on donations, the clinic awards bikes to children who don't have one.
Most of the children in attendance are from low-income families that cannot afford many things, much less bike maintenance. "In South Billings where we're located, the schools have a 90% eligibility for the school lunch program. Many of the children are raised by their mothers or grandmothers and they don't know how to fix a bike," said Rodda, also citing that 50-60% of the church's membership is on Supplemental Security Income. "People take care of one another however they can with hands-on help."
Most of the bike clinic volunteers are from the church, and this year support is coming from additional organizations like American Medical Response and the West End Rotary. "The youth leader from our sister church in Yakima, Washington was a national BMX champion. He's bringing 14 people and is training them to help," said Rodda. The trauma outreach program at St. Vincent's Hospital in Billings has also agreed to give bike helmets to children who need them.
Recently, the church was selected as a faith partner for the Communities Empowering Youth program because of its work with youth through the bike clinic. "We get together with this group and talk about what we're doing and our funding. We work together so we're not duplicating efforts," said Rodda. Sitting on this board has helped spread the word and gain new partnerships for the event. "My husband is the pastor at the church and he has done a lot of our networking as well," said Rodda.
This year's clinic will be held June 21, 2008 at the Living Water Church in South Billings. Rodda anticipates a large turnout from both volunteers and children needing their bikes fixed. One year, the clinic gave bike flags to children who attended, and every once in a while Rodda says she sees those flags on bikes around town. "Seeing those bike flags is a successful reminder of the day. We can't fix income problems, but we can help these kids get around."
