Bike-Aid ’86 on the Course Across America : Volunteers Try ‘Pedaling for Progress’ Over Hunger in U.S. and Third World

Is America, fresh from a frenzy of coast-to-coast hand-holding, ready for another Olympian fund-raiser for the poor? Organizers of Stanford University-based Bike-Aid ’86 hope so. They want hundreds of cyclists to pedal off to Washington to touch the conscience of middle America and raise money for self-help projects at home and in the Third World.

Bike-Aid (subtitled Pedaling for Progress) is to originate June 16 from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle, with cyclists converging later with groups leaving Houston and Tampa on July 12, all heading for a ceremonial finale at the United Nations in New York on Aug. 11.

The bikeathon is a project of the Overseas Development Network, a student organization based at Stanford and, on the East Coast, at Cambridge, Mass. The focus of the network’s 35 campus chapters (in California, also at Pomona College and UC Berkeley) is to fund small, long-term self-help projects in developing countries and impoverished areas of America.

Nazir Ahmad, a Bangladesh native who is co-founder of the network, acknowledges that, what with last year’s Live-Aid and this year’s Hands Across America and the determined if scaled-down Great Peace March, people may be “a little numb” to causes. But, he said, Bike-Aid organizers have learned from the other ventures and trimmed things down to workable size.

They quickly abandoned thoughts of 10,000 bicyclists. As of Wednesday, 100 had signed to make the entire 3,000-mile journey. If each of these raises the hoped-for $1 a mile in sponsorship, that would add up to $300,000. But just as important, organizers say, Bike-Aid ’86 is a people-to-people project that they hope will be the catalyst for dialogues with Americans who have never given a day’s thought to problems of the Third World.

Shaun Skelton, the national coordinator, said organizers recognize that poverty at home is of greater concern to middle Americans, many of whom have been hit hard by the farm crisis. Bikers will emphasize that 10% of proceeds will go to domestic projects, including one in Appalachia.

In each of the 225 cities and towns along the six routes, cyclists will distribute UNICEF materials on health, hunger and nutrition and, wherever invited, will present a slide show focusing on network projects and those of other small helping organizations.

“America’s a very isolated country,” Ahmad said, with in general a poor grasp of Third World realities. When Americans are asked to help, he added, it is “in reaction to crisis after crisis, famine after famine,” not in response to the underlying problems.

Focus on Poverty, Hunger

Bike-Aid’s goal, he said, is to get people to look at inter-relationships between poverty and hunger, to see how poverty denies people political voice and control over their environment and start thinking about long-term solutions.

Skelton, 26, is a Stanford Ph.D. student in electrical engineering and public policy with a particular interest in Third World technology. He and Ahmad conceived the idea of Bike-Aid last August and Skelton took this year off from his studies to work for it full time.

Stints with Cadillac in the summers of 1980 and 1981 cemented his commitment: “So much engineering money was spent on things that were icing on the cake. People at Cadillac would spend a year working on a digital readout that looked a little better. But that does not increase the quality of life at all.”

In developing countries, Skelton said, “a group of farmers having a tractor or not having a tractor makes a tremendous difference.”

Skelton, who considers himself “a serious touring biker,” is the only one of the organizers planning to ride all the way to Washington. He views it as more than a good cause. “It’s a great way to see America,” he said. (Los Angeles riders will go through such “Route 66” cities as Flagstaff, Ariz., Gallup, N. M., Amarillo, Tex. Oklahoma City and Joplin, Mo.)

Brian Bauer, 21, a Stanford senior in mechanical engineering and a dedicated bike racer on the Stanford Bike Team, is route coordinator. His interest in the role of engineering in international development dates from when he was 14 and living in Liberia, where his father served with a U.N. food and agricultural organization.

He first understood hunger, he said, when he offered a nickel to a Liberian child for a souvenir coaster the child had acquired. He recalled, “He ran off and bought a big piece of bread. He had the happiest face I’d ever seen.”

Joel Treisman, 24, Bike-Aid’s fund-raising coordinator, is a 1983 Stanford political science graduate who has his own software marketing consulting firm. His interest is an outgrowth of his involvement in student political organizations and of having worked and traveled in Europe and East Africa.

Nazir Ahmad, 26, co-founder of the Overseas Development Network with his brother, Kamal, a junior at Harvard, is taking a year off from his Ph.D. studies at the Food Research Institute at Stanford to help write a book on hunger. The book (for which the authors received a $6,000 advance) is “To Nourish Our World” and is scheduled for publication in October by Harper and Row. Ahmad said the publisher has agreed to donate royalties to a fund for students who wish to take time off for projects such as Bike-Aid.

The other organizers are Ellen Jones, 21, a Stanford senior in international relations, who is the outreach coordinator; media coordinator Frances Constantino, 22, who is working on her master’s degree in Third World development at Stanford’s Food Research Institute, and research assistant Danyelle O’Hara, 18, a Stanford freshman interested in a career in development.

Organizers are painfully aware that plenty of others have come along before them with splashy aid-the-hungry projects. Is the nation afflicted by burnout? “It’s hard to tell,” Skelton said. Ahmad suggested, “Hands Across America was trying to build a national spirit. We might as well be complementing that.”

“We’re less a national blitz,” Treisman said, more an organization committed to follow-up. And “don’t compare us with the Peace March,” Skelton added. “They started out, literally, as a moving community. We’re just a small group of bicyclists who want to crash on your gym floor. We’re not trying to be a mega-event. We’re smaller, fleeter,” far less dependent on support systems. (Bike-Aid plans to have two vans on each of the six routes to carry food and water, educational materials, first aid equipment and the riders’ clothes and sleeping bags.)

These vehicles will also serve as “sag wagons,” offering an occasional lift to riders who find themselves fatigued.

In the Los Angeles area, where sign-up has been a little slow, 12 bicyclists have come on board for the cross-country ride. Ahmad attributes sluggish local response partially to “fallout” from bad publicity surrounding The Great Peace March. The L.A. contingent, joined by a group pedaling up from San Diego two days earlier, is to push off from the Santa Monica Pier at 9 a.m. June 16 for a 40-mile ride to Pasadena and, the next day, on to San Bernardino.

At the same time, a group of 35 will set out from San Francisco’s United Nations Plaza. And, at the University of Washington campus in Seattle and at Portland’s Trunk Plaza downtown, the other West Coast groups will set out.

On July 12, groups originating in Tampa, Fla. and in Houston will start pedaling up through the South for a rendezvous with the West Coast cyclists in Washington on Aug. 5 and the final leg, to New York, arriving Aug. 10.

To date, Bike-Aid has riders from 40 states, among them students and teachers. The youngest are 16 (for safety concerns, that is the cutoff age) and the oldest are in their 60s.

“Donald Kennedy (Stanford president) may go with us part of the way,” Ahmad said. And there is a commitment, organizers said, from Gov. Richard Celeste of Ohio to pedal part way. Olympic gold medalist Eric Heiden will be bike racing in Europe this summer, but has been an active Bike-Aid patron.

Bike-Aid’s letterhead also lists as patrons Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, bicycling champions Greg LeMond and Rebecca Twigg and Sens. Bill Bradley of New Jersey and Paul Simon of Illinois.

“Anyone can participate for a day (for a donation of $12 including official T-shirt purchase),” Skelton said, maybe Laguna-to-Los Angeles. “Everyone can be part. Give us a call.” (The Stanford campus headquarters is at (415) 725-2869).

‘Expect Anything’

A guide for riders alerts them to expect average daily rides of 60 miles, with a rest day every 10th day. And it suggests, “Be flexible. Bike-Aid is going to be an adventure in more ways than one, and you will be well prepared if you are prepared to expect anything.”

Organizers hope cyclists will be availing themselves of a number of “freebie” complimentary meals and overnight lodging. But the worst-case scenario, they are warned, would be about $720 for meals and lodging. Riders must provide their own bikes, hard shell helmets and sleeping bags and transportation home for themselves and their bikes.

Despite an all-volunteer staff, telephones and office space donated by Stanford and a range of donated services, Bike-Aid has had to raise about $35,000 to cover expenses and, Skelton said Wednesday, “We’re almost there.” Safeway has come up with several thousand dollars of in-kind donations of food and printing and there has also been assistance from Hewlitt-Packard.

As a founder of the Overseas Development Network, Ahmad, whose father is a nutritionist and whose mother is an economist in Bangladesh, is dedicated to changing what he perceives as the prevailing American attitudes toward world hunger: “Americans think that hunger is because people are lazy or because food is just disappearing, that all aid is working or none of it is working. Or that there’s nothing they can do.”

The ‘Can-Do’ Approach

The network’s goals include seeking constructive solutions to world poverty, education and funding of small-scale self-help projects--a “can do” approach emphasizing how individuals can bring about social change. Currently, there are a dozen ODN-backed projects--in India, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, Haiti and the Dominican Republic as well as in Appalachia, each supported by a campus chapter through independent fund-raising efforts such as one-day fasts. (A total of $45,000 to date.)

Proceeds from Bike-Aid will fund projects both at home and in Third World communities and will also establish internships to send deserving American students to the poorest countries to work and learn. Other beneficiaries will be small international development organizations that share ODN’s philosophy--minimum staff, minimum overhead. These include Bikes Not Bombs, which sends bicycles to the Third World, and Trickle Up, which assists small Third World enterprises to become self-reliant.

Skelton, reflecting on the long months of planning for Bike-Aid ‘86, said, “We don’t know how many people will show up, but we can’t get tied up in numbers. We’re driven by our ideals. And we will have made a significant impact, will have met with people in 225 cities and towns along the way. That we never can apologize for.”