Our Aim: to use exercise to empower communities to live healthier and happier lives
Our Beginning
Since 2012 we have been working with our community and helping each other on the journey to better health. We empower Indigenous people to take exercise and serve as role models for each other. Our programs work by removing the barriers between people and the healthier, happier versions of themselves that they want to be.
“That feeling when you actually cross that finish line, when you’re done, that feeling that you get that you accomplished something you never thought you could, it’s like no other. you can’t explain it,”
Our project is a peer mentored, exercise-based, lifestyle intervention. This sounds complicated, but it really isn’t! We love to ride bikes with our friends and when we ride together, we motivate each other. We believe people learn better from mentors with who they can identify, so our mentors are Indigenous people working in Indigenous communities.
We also think it’s important to have a goal. Long term lifestyle change is gradual and sometimes you don’t get to celebrate your progress. That is why we have goal events every year so that we can look back and see how far we have come.
Our Mission
"To research and implement peer mentored, exercise-based lifestyle interventions in Indigenous communities. Focusing on goal events, we aim to use community-based education and exercise programs to empower people to live healthier and happier lives as well as to be changemakers in their own communities."
Building on the huge success that a pilot program has had on the Pascua Yaqui reservation, we want to grow the program to work with other people living with diabetes in Indigenous communities.
Indigenous have the highest rates of diabetes of any ethnic group in the nation. The rate of diabetes diagnosis amongst Native American people has increased over the past ten years by approximately 25%.
Indigenous communities face other issues as well, but we want to look for solutions, not problems. Riding bikes has a huge impact on health and wellbeing. Cycling is a healthy form of exercise for almost any shape, size, age, or gender of person. It’s also a great way to get around and spend time with people you love. Learning to fix a bike is empowering, and helps our youth learn basic mechanical skills. Most of all though, riding bikes is fun!
Get Involved
If you live near one of our programs, we can accept equipment donations. Click on the donation link in the menu and let us know what gear you've got and we will put it to use with one of our riders.
If you'd like to help us out with a donation, please click the "learn More" below. Even if you can only spare a few dollars, this could help buy bike parts, equipment or education materials which help to empower people to change their lives for the better.
If you can join us for one of our goal events, please click the registration and fundraising link below and you can make every mile you ride count towards our goal of empowering people to live healthier and happier lives.