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A bicycle can expand opportunities for people who might otherwise find themselves restricted. That’s the idea behind a new Rocktown Youth Mentoring program, where a group of mentors teach at-risk kids from Emerson Alternative the value of a bicycle.
For the past 15 years Rocktown Youth has been mentoring young people. The process begins when a young person and a mentor are teamed up. Usually, it starts on a climbing wall at the Rocktown Climbing facility. However, the organization’s new push to help kids by teaching them about bicycles is thanks, in part, to the Oklahoma City Public School District and Emerson Alternative School. While Emerson has traditionally been focused on girls, this program helps to address boys who might need a little extra guidance.
“The guys may have a credit-deficiency problem, they might be in the foster care system or they might have spent some time in juvie,” says Steven Charles, executive director of Rocktown Youth Mentoring. “There are all these different scenarios that, for whatever reason, they weren’t cutting it in a traditional setting.”
The program has attracted a handful of young men at Emerson to participate. After traditional classes have ended, they return to a classroom setting. Only this time, the lessons are about how to take care of a bike and character development. Charles says Joshua Vaught is the classroom instructor.
“He’s teaching them how to do everything from changing a tube in a tire, air it up, fix a chain, lube a chain, build entire frames, like do a whole bike build. We’re starting with that,” says Charles. “We’re creating an opportunity to give them a marketable skill.”
He notes that most people have some of those skills taught to them by family. The program helps to close that gap for the students at Emerson.
“The mentorship is the centerpiece of it all to me. You pair a kid with a mentor who loves on them, cares about them. I remember my dad teaching me how to change a bicycle tire and bicycle tube. Those are opportunities that a lot of the ones we are working with don’t have. They don’t have that caring, solid, stable adult investing in them.”
Charles says through the rockclimbing program, they have seen mentoring work first hand. In fact, a couple of the students who entered the climbing mentoring program 15 years ago, continue to meet with their mentors even as adults.
The bicycle program carries on that tradition established by the rock-climbing program. The youth are given the opportunity to develop character.
“It is actually credited as a character education class,” says Charles. It just happens to be a bicycle we’re using to teach it. Part of the theory there is if you get your hands and feet involved, you’re a lot more engaged as a whole person.”
During the eight weeks, the kids are taught core character traits, which will help them in school, at work and in life.
However, not everything is taught in the classroom. The kids get to see what perseverance is really like outside of the classroom. Every week, DNA Racing hosts a bicycle race at Wheeler Park using the old municipal airport runways as tracks. It also gives them an opportunity to see how the bike fixing skills are used in a “real life” cycling situation.
“We’d love for this to be something that helps develop the junior field here. That we could provide a pipeline of kids who never even heard of a crit racer.”
A crit race is usually held on a closed course, like the one in Wheeler Park. Race length is usually a combination of a timed race with a number of laps. In Oklahoma City, they hold the races every Tuesday, if the weather allows.
Many times, the mentor and the student will go on a ride along the trails of the Oklahoma River or at Lake Hefner, just to spend time together. Another benefit of the program.
While bicycle racing and rides provide excitement, the Rocktown Youth Mentoring program also provides practical learning experiences, like repairing cycles of all types. In fact, the kids in the program are helping to keep the Spokies, OKC’s downtown bike share program, up to speed.
“Just like every bike sharing program, just like every bike, you’ve got to work on it or it’s going to fall apart on you. So, we partnered with Spokies to be their maintenance arm. We have their bicycles in class,” says Charles.
The kids going through the program receive their own bike at the end. Rocktown Youth Mentoring’s executive director believes it is a tool that helps to expand the horizon and the opportunities to those at-risk youth who usually find themselves without reliable transportation and limited availability of jobs.
“I looked at the corner of 23rd and MLK. It seemed like a good spot to start with a nearby population that is living in poverty. From 23rd and MLK, if you go a mile, the likely distance you can walk to work, there’s say 5,000 jobs. Then you hop on a bike and in about the same time you can go say five miles. There are 178,000 jobs. From 5,000 to 180,000 is a huge jump.”
As the program expands, Charles expects there will be a need for more mentors and more bikes for the kids in the program. Volunteers and donations are welcome. To find out more, please go to the Rocktown Youth Mentoring website, rocktownyouth.org.
Written by Jason Doyle Oden
