Bramalea CycleFest Kids Helmet Giveaway for 60 local youth
It’s five days until Bramalea CycleFest 2015 and it’s time for the kids helmet giveaway evening! The van is crammed with about a dozen bikes from Brampton Safe City and the Peel Safety Village. We are taking them to the All People’s Church. This is the fourth time this month that we’ve used the van to ferry kids’ bikes from one Brampton location to the other, in preparation for the Bramalea CycleFest 2015 Kids Bike Giveaway.
Monday night at the All People’s Church we delivered bike safety training to about 60 kids ages 2-17 with the majority of them under the age of 8! They were accompanied by their parents so, all told, we had about 100 people crammed into the church basement.
Dayle, Steve, Polly, Lisa and I represented BikeBrampton. Technical expertise came from Wayne Henry who was there courtesy of City of Brampton Recreation. And thank goodness for Jenna Canning ex from the Brampton Safe City Association who was brilliant at using her teaching skills to control the little munchkins!
The group watched as Jenna and a young volunteer helped “Marvin the Melon” meet his unhelmeted demise on the tile floor of the basement, after successfully surviving the drop wearing his helmet protection.
Then chaos reigned as free bike helmets, courtesy of Pastor Finu’s organizational skills and the Canadian Tire Jump Start program, were handed out.
Despite my stern instructions that only team leaders were to collect the helmets for their groups, a melee broke out, with parents and kids rifling through the boxes looking for the ones with the prettiest colours! The kids helmet giveaway is not going as smoothly as we had planned.
We eventually wrestled back control and got 60 kids with 60 helmets sized and fitted properly.
Then Jenna and I took the younger kids through a few of the indoor lessons from the Bike Rodeo Community Kit.
Dayle and Lisa played the MTO Road Safety Challenge game with the teenagers to bring them up to speed on the new Bill 31 Keeping Ontario’s Roads Safe, by testing them on rules that apply to cyclists.
The sessions were both hilarious and stressful for us, and fun for parents and kids alike, as we all prepared to Bramalea CycleFest 2015.
We suspect they may even have learned something about bike safety as they prepared for Bramalea CycleFest 2015!
Another 7 kids were outfitted with helmets and training 3 days later when we staged the Bramalea CycleFest kid bike giveaway!
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