E-MAGAZINE ####1

“This bicycles saves lives”

JULY 2015

CooP-AFRICA

CONTENT

Results 2014 3

Bike4Work 4

The bicycle saves lives 5-6

Bike4Care 7

Bike4School 8

Volunteers 9

Inspiring stories and pictures

We are proud to present the first edition of our e-magazine. A

magazine with inspiring stories that let you experience the power

of the bicycle.

This e-magazine has been specially created for our loyal donors

who enable us to help small entrepreneurs, health workers and

students with a bicycle.

In this first edition you will find a summary of the results of 2014

and stories of beneficiaries from our bicycle interventions about

what the bicycle has meant to them. We also inform you more in

more detail about our new Bike4Care programme.

We thank you for your support.

Luuk Eickmans, director

With bicycles CooP-Africa improves access to

income, education and health care.

The distinctiveness of CooP-Africa is our unique

approach of looking at development from a

mobility perspective. With the BICYCLE as our

means.

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@coopafrica

146 entrepreneurs

equipped with a bicycles

67% less travel time

to school

214 students (+teachers)

equipped with a bicycle and trained in

basic bicycle maintenance and repair

Attendance increased with

85%

89% less latecomers

715 community health workers

equipped with a bicycle and trained in basic

bicycle maintenance and repair.

30 bicycle ambulances

1,9x as many

house visits

8.456 cases in which

Bike4care saved lives

More than 50.000 households

(>250,000 people) have better

access to health care

3 Social entreprises set-up:

1. Pedi-Teksi tours and courier service,

2. Bikeventures Tours, rental and safaris,

3. Bicycle production started in new Green

Hub Kenya

Results in 2014

In the Bike4Work projects the bicycle is

the means to self-empowerment. For

many entrepreneurs (bicycle taxi’s, street

vendors, traders, farmers, waste

collectors etc.) the bicycle allows savings

on transport costs and/or increases the

income so the entrepreneur s’ disposable

income increases.

DONATE TO BIKE4WORK >>>>

Pheobe Atieno Awino, farmer and trader

Received a bicycle in 2011 in the Bike4Work

programme in Kenya.

“I earn my money with selling vegetables. I

sell tomatoes, unions and mais, depending on

the season. I sell on the local market, this is 4

km from my house. Once a week I travel to

the market in town (10km) where I can get

better prices. The bicycle helps me a lot!”

THIS BICYCLE SAVES LIVES

In 2015 CooP-Africa starts a unique

Bike4Care project: this bicycles saves lives.

Thanks to support from the Dutch Postcode

Lottery and Wild Geese we can equip 2,500

community health workers in Kenya with a

bicycle as a result of which 1.25 million

people will have better access to quality care.

Accessibility of medical facilities is vital . But

sometimes people in Kenya live far from a health

center. And care is often inaccessible. Maternal

and child mortality is therefore very high and an

unnecessary number of people die of

preventable and/or treatable diseases such as

malaria and TB . This is a big problem, but not

insurmountable.

Kenya has a system of voluntary health workers.

They are trained by the government to recognize

certain illnesses , advise on nutrition and

hygiene , monitoring and supervising pregnant

women and provide information. The health

workers make home visits to families in the

more remote villages. Usually they walk, so the

number of visits in a day is limited. Public

transportation is very scarce or expensive. CooP-

Africa’s Bike4Care programme provides these

health workers with a bicycle. With a bicycle,

they visit twice as many families in a day and are

much quicker on location if their help is needed

urgently. Thanks to the bicycle, the health of

people in rural Kenya will greatly improve.

New in this Bike4Care programme is that

health workers have the opportunity to earn

money by selling life-saving and life -improving

products such as solar lights, water purification

tablets and filters, mosquito nets etc.. Besides

their heroic volunteer work they can now also

earn a living to support their families. So they

(1) bring basic health care to people at home,

(2) earn an income for the upkeep of their

families and (3) isolated households have

access to life-improving products for a

competitive price.

Kenya 2,500 1.25 million

“It's very nice to see that Kenya has a fairly

extensive system, in which volunteers are

committed to provide home-based care. I love

the fact that Kenya is developing this way. And

it is really nice that we can contribute

something to this system by giving the health

workers the opportunity to develop

economically and be more efficient so that they

can continue to work efficiently as a volunteer

for the community”

Luuk Eickmans

Sustainability

Since 2015 the bicycles are manufactured and

assembled in the bicycle workshop of the Green

Hub in Kisumu, Kenya (and from 2016 also in

Jinja, Uganda). This will created 15 jobs in Kenya

for young people from the slums of Kisumu.

The bicycles are not given for free but issued to

the community health workers on a revolving

fund. The health workers pay off the bicycle in

installments (with income generated from the

sales of the products). From the payments of the

bicycle and the revenue from the sales of the

products we can therefore again equip 1,250

new health workers with a bicycle after 1.5

years.

This project is supported by:

Ambition 2016

Wild Geese and National Postcode Lottery

support us in implementing this Bike4Care: This

bicycle saves lives in Kenya (2015-2016). In 2016

CooP-Africa, aims to roll out this programme in

Uganda and equip 1,000 health workers in

Uganda with a bicycle. For this we need your

support!

Help the community health workers in Uganda to

access a bicycle in 2016 so that they can provide

basic health care to which everyone is entitled to!

Go to donation page of CooP-Africa.

In Bike4Care programme the bicycle is a

means for community health workers to

visit more patients to reach patients faster

and to cover greater distances. The

bicycle ambulances make it possible to

transport the sick and pregnant women,

cheap and comfortable to a hospital . The

bicycle (ambulance) saves lives.

Mary Okoth, mother of 3 children

Has better access to health care since 2014,

because community health workers in Kenya

have reveived a bicycle in the Bike4Care

programme.

DONATE TO BIKE4CARE >>>>

Play

In Bike4School projects bicycles create

favourable conditions that improve

performance in schools and access to

education.

DONATE TO BIKE4SCHOOL >>>>

Kiyemba Godfrey, student

Received a bicycle in the Bike4School

programme in Uganda in 2013.

‘‘When I was in class S1 in 2008 I stayed overnight in the dormitory of

the school (at a fee), due to the long distance (9 km) I had to travel from

home to school. But since I have a bicycle I have experienced a positive

change, because now I can travel from home to school every day

because I can ride my bicycle. This has reduced the fee , and makes it

possible for my parents to save. Now I just pay 60,000 Shillings per term

instead of 250,000 Shillings in the previous terms.”

"Does your bicycle groan and squeak. Do two people

a favour and bring it to Teun." This is how Teun

Timmermans from Nijmegen introduces himself on his

website www.timmermansfietsen.nl. He builds

custom-made bicycles from vintage retro bicycle to e-

bikes in Nijmegen. For CooP-Africa Teun has been of

an invaluable value as a consultant and soon perhaps

as trainer of the bicycle mechanics in Kisumu.

Teun: “What appeals to me in CooP-Africa is that they

aim to make available a robust, yet affordable bicycle

in Africa. For this cause I love to contribute my

knowledge and skills and I have worked with great

pleasure on the development of the Tembo bicycle”.

COOP-AFRICA IS LOOKING FOR VOLUNTEERS.

APPLY NOW! >>>>

VOLUNTEERS

AD TUMMERS: bicycle entrepreneur

::::TEUN TIMMERMANS bicycle builder

Ad Tummers of Beixo (www.beixo.nl) has been

supporting CooP-Africa since 2008, both financially

and with expertise. In the past months he

contributed to the development of the Tembo bicycle

with all his knowledge, experience and network.

Ad: “I support CooP-Africa because I share their

passion to work with the bicycle as a solution. Whether

it is in the Netherlands or in Africa, a bicycle creates

opportunities. Specifically, the Bike4Care project,

providing bicycles to health workers, has my special

attention. My father was a general practitioner, access

to care is essential for development. In Kenya I myself

have seen how CooP-Africa is working, professional,

with a vision and effective. I had a lot of fun

contributing to the growth of a bicycle from paper to

reality. I am very proud of the Tembo.”

As a small foundation CooP-Africa enjoys working with volunteers and interns who want to use their

knowledge, time and energy to help to achieve our goals. For instance Teun and Ad who have helped to

design our own CooP-Africa bicycle named Tembo . Proudly CooP-Africa will introduce this bicycle in

2015. Our thanks go to intern Eline of University of Technology Delft , Teun and Ad for achieving our

goal to design a quality bicycle at an affordable price.

www.coop-africa.org