In this newsletter...

1. ​N​ew A​ccessible Ramp Entrance​
2. Please log in at the start of your shift using Point!
3. ​Second container of the year - loading starts March 25th for Zambia​
4. ​Meet Luna, our new Volunteer Capacity Building Mechanic!​
5. ​MSRN Community Bike Event April 25th​
6. ​Bike collection events on April 25th​

Happy March, volunteers! St. Patrick's day is incoming, and so are the bike collections! We have a ton of events happening next month, and we will be clearing out the dock by packing up a container in a couple weeks to the Chipego Bike Shop in Zambia. We have been working with A&K Philanthropy to support the shop with bikes for over a decade, and we are excited to start the next 10 years! We will have the shipping party as events on our new volunteer system Point as soon as the dates are confirmed. Speaking of Point, please log in as soon as you come in, not at the end like our old system.

If you have been around the shop, you may have noticed some changes in Brandon’s -- we are reorganizing our volunteer workshop with our new Volunteer Capacity Building Mechanic, Luna, taking the lead and collecting feedback from volunteers along the way. This space shake up is in no small part needed to make way for a new accessible ramp entrance for Working Bikes, a project which will likely get started in early April when Breaking Ground Builders, a construction company located in North Lawndale, gets to work. And if you haven't already seen it, here's a reminder to check out our Annual Report, wrapped up earlier this month, which details just some of the INCREDIBLE IMPACT you all made possible at Working Bikes in 2025. Check it out here!!!
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New Entrance and Ramp Updates

There has been a lot of dust around our first floor the last couple months! Brandon’s has moved to the front of the shop, our retail floor has been rearranged, and we have gained a new entrance to the basement! This has all been done in anticipation of a new entrance to our space, one with an accessible ramp! The new entrance will be on 24th place, starting on the sidewalk right by Western and sloping gradually up, with a landing halfway, to the 5th-from-Western-former-window-opening on our north facade. There will be a landing at the top and stairs off the west side of the landing for quick access to the ground level. Double doors will open to a vestibule (to help maintain the building’s temperature) and give easy access to the service department and salesfloor straight ahead, with our Chicago Sukkah Design Project sukkah serving as our new cash wrap. The ramp itself will be four feet wide, 3 feet between the railings, for enough space someone to accommodate someone coming in or out with their bike or wheelchair.

We will be working with our neighbors in North Lawndale, J&J Construction (now Breaking Ground Builders) who do a lot of good work providing affordable housing to the community. Construction will most likely begin in early April. We are very excited to make getting bikes into our building easier and safer for everyone!

Our next shipment will be heading to the Chipego Bike shop in Zambia at the end of this month! We are planning for the week of the 23rd, on Wednesday the 25th through Friday the 27th, so mark your calendars! There will be an event posted on our new volunteer system Point when the container is booked. For all our logistics nerds out there: containers sent to our AKP partners are almost always purchased locally (from our friends at Big Blue Boxes) and live a second life as secure storage facilities on the ground in Africa. Costs to send these SOCs (shipper owned containers) are typically higher and bookings harder to come by, as the carriers want seaworthy certificates in hand before confirming space on their vessels, and those can take some time and container shuffling to generate.
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Our partnership with the Chipego Bike Shop and A&K Philanthropy is over a decade old and in that time the shop has received over 17 containers, a total of over 10,000 bikes! The Chipego Bike Shop’s success provides a salary that can pay school fees for the families of a half dozen mechanics, but the shop's influence extends beyond direct impact on shop mechanics. Their hard work allows the project to donate bicycles to medical workers, support small-business start-ups and even fund repairs to keep the only school from closure. We are so proud to have supported these women for over 10 years, and are looking forward to the next 10!
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Hey, guys!! My name is Luna. I have so enjoyed getting to know you all the past few weeks and look forward to meeting and wrenching with even more of you in the near future! I am a Chicagoan returning home after graduating from Macalester College last spring. I spent the last 3 years running a bike co-op at my college where I taught folks how to fix up bikes and created an accessible and welcoming environment for all the students, professors, and neighbors coming through. I feel so lucky that this position allows me to continue the work I have been doing the last few years but now in my home city!! I love to ride, play bike polo, spend time with my family, cold plunge in the lake, and make pupusas. I listen to lots of Paul Simon and John Prine, I have lived and worked in Ecuador, and I have travelled around the US in a van working on farms. Also, I wear a size 9.5 shoe in women’s (which I’ve been told is small for my height), and in a previous life I was a frog catcher in southern Louisiana (thanks for the inspiring questions, Jerry). I am excited to continue to strengthen community amongst volunteers and celebrate all you great people. See ya soon!

On April 25th Working Bikes will be co-hosting a community event, tentatively titled “Safe Riding in Marshall Square,” with our friends at TCEP's Ollin Youth. This will be 2026's iteration of what has become an annual tradition to encouraging cycling in our neighborhood and is once again made possible by the Marshall Square Resource Network's community grant program!

We are still working on the specific details of the day but the location (Saucedo parking lot, 24th and California) and energy will be similar to last year's "Hot Wheels" celebration that merged bikes, honoring El Día del Niño (April 30th), good tunes, and free food. We’ll be taking a few mile group ride this year to highlight all the safe cycling infrastructure in Little Village and North Lawndale. SAFE Ambassadors will be on hand to help some of our neighbors learn how to ride, WB will be making bike donations, and due to popular demand, we'll be bringing back the bike-by piñatas. TCEP will be handling food and beverages, and we'll make sure that all of the Ollin Youth are well equipped for riding in the neighborhood all summer! We will need some help from Working Bikes volunteers setting up, performing safety checks, and more, so let us know if you’re up for helping out at Safe Riding in Marshall Square (shoot us an email at volunteer@workingbikes.org)! It will be a blast!

We're planning to kick off festivities in Marshall Square at 2:30 pm, giving volunteers and staff a little, and we do mean little, time to get over to Saucedo after unloading and organizing bikes from a total of 7 collection events (!!!) across Chicagoland in the morning. We have some incredible volunteers lined up to help with collections (check out the calendar here, and please let us know if you're up for joining any event!) but are still looking for support in Glendale Heights to say thank you to donors from 10-12 then help load up the truck when a WB vehicle swings by at the end. Let us know if you're up for helping out!

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