Our Current Projects
Community Bike Build
Giving a bicycle away to a deserving child who has never owned one is truly a legendary moment. This was the original moment that lead us to ‘Be Legendary’. We wanted to feel legendary more often, just like you do when you give a bicycle away.
A bicycle is empowerment and freedom to a child. The wind in your face and having the ability to go where you want REALLY fast is completely awesome!
From an adult’s point of view, and what we feel is important (because we forget how important that feeling of freedom is), we also need statistics and numbers! Putting a child on a bicycle before the age of 12 and getting them to ride to school means they are 65% less likely to be obese as an adult. getting an adolescent to ride a bicycle means they are 48% less likely to be obese as an adult. WOW!
We have given away thousands of bicycles all over the world through our corporate bike program, Building A Dream.
In fact, we discovered last year that we had given away over 50,000 bikes in the last 15 years! While that was an awesome number, we know there are still SO many more children who will never own a bike. So, we asked ourselves, how to we give away 500,000 in 5 years? A different kind of thinking – legendary thinking – would be necessary to create scale.
We decided to empower anyone who wants to give away bicycles and created the Community Bike Build! This is a crowdsourcing site that gives any individuals the tools to get sponsors for bikes. Once enough bike sponsors are in place, our staff executes the event. The best part is that there are also funds for the Catalyst – the person who started the Community Bike Build. They can give it to a charity, use it to buy more bikes or use it as a source of revenue. You can actually make a living putting kids on bikes!
The only way for us to do this was to essentially make almost nothing unless we actually put hundreds of thousands of children on bikes. And we are fine with that! That means LOTS of kids having the freedom and independence of a bike.
Buy a SWEET Ride, Put Kids on Bikes
To help put kids on bikes, we started selling lifestyle bikes! 100% of the profit from each sale goes toward putting kids on bikes in YOUR community. You are sponsoring kids local to you with every purchase.
Here is how it works. Your purchase is lumped in with other zip codes close to you. If someone in your group of zip codes – maybe YOU – holds a Community Bike Build, your sponsored bikes are included in that build. When the build is happening, you are notified so that you and friends you invite can assemble the new bikes and meet the children who are getting them. Be sure to bring your bikes because we go on a ride with our new riders!
If no Catalyst holds a Community Bike Build, once 30 bikes have been sponsored our Be Legendary Staff comes in and executes the build!
It may take a few months to get to 30 bikes, but you can continue to help by telling people to check out the site, buy a bike and put local kids on bikes.
Look to the right and see some of the bikes we sell!
Sole Purpose: Shoes for Life
We have been created a recycled/re-purposed shoe for children in third world countries. Soles for Souls helps us distribute them all over the world through their contacts.
We don’t simply provide shoes, we provide shoes FOR LIFE! There are several organizations – TOMS Shoes for example – that have been donating shoes and have created great awareness for the need for shoes. Unfortunately, there are serious unintended consequences when a group of well-wishers drop into a town and give everyone a pair of shoes. For one, it puts all shoe entrepreneurs out of business. For another, the shoes that are donated, especially to children, last just long enough for their feet to lose the callouses that protected their feet!
Our latest version of shoes for assembly include recycled automobile tire tread and leather uppers that are stitched together by participants in our programs! These sandals and shoes will almost NEVER wear out if taken care of and to that end, we are creating ‘Shoe Banks’ that will live at schools. For many students, you must wear shoes in order to attend school.
At the schools with our Shoe Banks, if a child needs a pair of shoes, they find a pair that fits. When they outgrow it, they turn in their current pair for a new pair. When they graduate, they take their last pair with them.
We have partnered with Wayne Elsey’s company, Funds2Orgs, that creates micro-entrepreneurs throughout the world. These entrepreneurs are responsible for the Shoe Bank and repairing the shoes that are turned back in from the students.
Our corporate partners continue to donate shoes and assemble sandals and shoes that go into these Shoe Banks.
This creates a fully sustainable model in which everyone wins!