Plagarism

No posts in a couple of weeks, but I have a note from my mother (work, vacation, catching up at work after vacation). Purely in the interest of keeping this blog alive, I'm stealing content from another site. The Bamboo Bike Project is a joint venture of Columbia University and Craig Calfee (of Calfee Design) to empower Africans to build bicycles out of local materials, bamboo in this case.

I've donated several bikes over the years and the cost of shipping frequently overwhelms organizations trying to get the bikes over there. This sort of project sounds like a much more effective solution, along the lines of: "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."

From the site:

The Bamboo Bike Project is a collaboration between Scientists and Engineers at The Earth Institute at Columbia University, and a bicycle builder at Calfee Design. The project aims to examine the feasibility of implementing cargo bikes made of bamboo as a sustainable form of transportation in Africa. The ultimate goals of the project are:
To build a better bike for poor Africans in rural areas.
To stimulate a bicycle building industry in Africa to satisfy local needs.