Marcel Gascon |
Kiev (EFE) more remote and need help.
“Above all, we need women’s bicycles, with a low frame, because many social workers are women,” one of the founders of Bikes4Ukraine, Mikael Colville-Andersen, tells Efe, who on his website encourages all Europeans who want to donate their bicycles to contact them.
Another of the characteristics that make these bicycles especially useful is that they have baskets in which to load the products needed by the people most affected by the war.
“A humble bicycle is a vital tool in bombed-out rural and urban areas for people to receive food, medicine and other basic goods, but also to go to the doctor or to school,” says this Danish mobility and urban planning specialist. .
Due to the destruction of roads and public transport, and the scarcity and high price of fuel, millions of Ukrainians have great difficulty getting around, making the bicycle an extremely useful means of transport.
A request from Ukraine
Bikes4Ukraine began to be conceived when Colville-Andersen received a request for help from urban planners in the Ukrainian city of Lviv who had read his books on promoting cycling in urban environments.
The population of this city in western Ukraine has increased by about 30% since the start of the war, as a result of the arrival of some 200,000 internally displaced persons from the east and south of the country, the areas that have suffered the most the consequences of Russian aggression.
In response to this demographic pressure that overwhelmed municipal public transport, the Danish activist mobilized his contacts in Copenhagen and, together with his new partners in Ukraine, organized the collection and shipment to that country of hundreds of bicycles that today facilitate mobility. of the displaced settled in Lviv.
Thanks to the donations of bikes and money to collect them from all over Europe and transport them to their final destination, the project has spread to towns that were liberated by the Ukrainian army after being occupied by Russia, such as Bucha and Irpin, to the side of Kiev, or Kherson, in the south of the country.
Sponsored by the Danish beer company Carlsberg, which has paid for the freight of the trucks to the collection points in Ukraine, the initiative has already sent hundreds of bikes that are used daily in cities hard hit by Russian attacks such as Chernigiv. (north), Dnipro, Kriviy Rih (center), Zaporizhia or Mykolaiv (south).
The “poetic part” of the project
In the midst of the intense work involved in loading and unloading hundreds of bicycles that have just arrived in Kiev from Hungary, together with other volunteers, Colville-Andersen highlights the “poetic part” of a project that directly connects the owners of the bicycles donated with their beneficiaries.
On some of the bikes, their former owners hang laminated messages translated into Ukrainian, telling them when they bought the bike, explaining its sentimental value to them, and conveying their love for Ukraine, while leaving their contact details to start contacting us. communicate with the receiver.