COMMUNITY ONE BLOG

2SLGBTQ+ Bike Program: 2022 Rainbow Grants Recipient

Over the coming weeks we’re sharing the 39 stories of our 2022 Rainbow Grants recipients! All of these deserving projects are receiving critical grant funding as a result of your generous donations to Community One Foundation. Read more and support these projects where you can! If you’d like to see more work like this supported in our community, please consider donating to Community One!

GENERAL GRANT (available for up to $1,500 and are open to groups or individuals without charitable status.)

Charlie’s FreeWheels grant will go towards entire classes and exclusive shop time dedicated specifically to serving people of marginalized genders, who have been made to feel excluded in the cycling industry.

Within the cycling industry as a whole, and particularly in mechanics work, people who are racially marginalized and gender marginalized are grossly underrepresented. By creating a safe space to nurture those skills, Charlie’s FreeWheels are meeting the needs of people facing multiple intersecting marginalizations in our community.

With the support of a Rainbow Grant, this initiative will be able to get 10 queer youth onto a bike that they built by themselves. Receiving this funding would cover 10 queer youth to go through the program from start to finish, with $100 covering the bike frame, new and used parts for the bike, $25 covering the cost of meals for the entire duration of programming, and $25 to cover a safety kit, consisting of a helmet, a lock, and lights, for after they leave the program.

Charlie’s was founded in 2009 to honour the memory of Charles Prinsep. Charlie was a strong advocate for the accessibility and safety of cycling in our city. Struck by a car on a cross-continental cycling journey in 2007, Charlie only lived to the age of 23. Inspired by his ideals, Charlie’s uses a hands-off teaching model to support young people to build, maintain, and safely ride bicycles.