Bicycles for Humanity is a movement that stands for entrepreneurialism, accountability and humanity. In the developed world, chapters form to collect bikes, raise the funds and then cover the cost of buying the container that becomes a BEC, "Bicycle Empowerment Centre" and ship them to Africa. All that the groups sending them want to know is that the bikes are services, used to help the people gain mobility and a better life.

Accountability and feedback, pictures, stories, testimonials are key to a grassroots movement and motivating all to continue to work long hours for no pay. Today's connected, networked world allows all to share this information, be it through Facebook, Youtube, websites, email, photos, videos or any other collaborate technology or application that is emerging. To facilitate this flow of information and communications, we have started the B4H African Partner Program.

In Namibia, with the help of BEN, there is a very strong program in place to give feedback and accountability to all supporting this country. We have been swamped with over 100 requests for bikes in many other African countries. If you are interested in bikes for your community or you know a community that is in need of bikes, then the Bicycles for Humanity, African Partner Program might be of interest.

To start off, we expect all communities receiving bikes to clearly recognize the efforts of the chapter or group sending them the bikes on their website. We expect that groups receiving bikes will demonstrate accountability and professional business practices and, on a monthly basis, keep the partner chapter or group informed. We believe that a strong flow of communications fosters excitement and enthusiasm to do more, hopefully leading to long term relationships between communities thousands of miles apart.

We have an Agreement covering this and if this is acceptable to you, we will build a website for you on the main Bicycles for Humanity site and encourage communications between chapters here and members of your community, leading to a relationship to send bikes and support your community. We believe that accountability, entrepreneurialism and multiple members of communities in Africa and here coming together in a co-operative fashion, of caring, sharing and helping is the key and we will encourage and facilitate this as much as possible.

In Namibia, Michael Linke and BEN, Bicycle Empowerment Network are an approved partner and have done an outstanding job helping the people of Namibia help themselves. We hope that other countries and communities follow the model set out by BEN and we encourage you to contact Michael and BEN about how they can help you in your community.

If you are interested in becoming a part of the Bicycles for Humanity, African Partner Program, please contact me, info@bicycles-for-humanity.org for further information, or download the Partner Program PDF from our Resources link.

In Uganda we have had a lot of interest and if you know of any groups that might be interested in receiving a BEC, please let me know. The program is open to all countries in Africa that we can safely get bikes into and where we have teams in that community keen and able to manage these mobility centres