Americans Plan to Avoid Sugar, Eat More Sustainably in 2018

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A national consumer survey of 1,023 Americans conducted by Wakefield Research on eating habits in 2018, found that most (67%) Americans will be prioritizing healthy or socially-conscious food purchases in 2018.
 
Their primary point of emphasis is cutting back on sugars, with nearly half of consumers (47%) planning to eat less sugar or buy more ‘no sugar added’ products this year. The next most prominent purchase factors are: emphasizing natural ingredient purchases, such as those with ‘no artificial colors or flavors’ (37%) and shopping for more sustainable products and ingredients (22%).
 
 
The report was released by Label Insight, a company that generates information around product transparency – covering 80% of the top selling food, pet, and personal care items in the United States.  Their proprietary data science captures product labeling information and creates more than 22,000 unique custom attributes per product. Some of the key findings were:
 

Shaking the Sugar Habit
 

Baby Boomers and women are by far the most likely to simmer down the sweetness, with 53% of Boomers planning to cut down on sugary foods compared to only 40% of Millennials. More than half (52%) of women will be looking to reduce their sugar intake, while only 41% of men feel the same.
 

Shopping Sustainably

When it comes to shopping with a social consciousness in 2018, men are particularly keen on knowing that the food they chose is sustainable, with 26% spotlighting sustainability in their food choices compared to only 19% of women. Millennials are also emphasizing sustainability more than older generations, 26% compared to 17% of Gen Xers.

 

Diet Decisions


For many Americans, maintaining healthy or socially-conscious eating habits will mean choosing a gluten-free, vegan, ketogenic or Paleo diet to serve as a guide, but these methods are not equally appreciated among the generations. In fact, 1 in 5 (20%) Millennials report they are likely to follow one of these diets in 2018, while only slightly more than 1 in 10 (11%) of Baby Boomers expect to do likewise. While Baby Boomers lead the pack when it comes to cutting out sugar, they may be less eager to follow the stricter rules of these popular diets.
 

Improve Label Transparency 


To help them better understand what’s in the products they use and consume, Americans want better-defined and more transparent food labels. Indeed, the primary change consumers want to see from food brands and retailers is product labels that provide information they can better understand in 2018 (25%). The next most pressing need is greater transparency into ingredients (14%) and easier-to-identify ‘clean’ or minimally processed products (14%).
 
“It is no surprise that the majority of consumers are asking brands and retailers to provide more insight and clarity about their products,” said Patrick Moorhead, chief marketing officer at Label Insight. “With so many Americans seeking healthy and socially-conscious food, knowing what is in it and how it is processed is a more important selling point now than ever. The fact is brands and retailers who want to retain or gain market share will need to comply with these consumer demands or risk being left behind.”
 
While everyone is eager to get a better line of sight into the food they eat, Millennials and Baby Boomers are in two different aisles when it comes to what they most want from brands and retailers in 2018. Baby Boomers (33%) are more than twice as likely as Millennials (15%) to prioritize wanting product labels that provided information they can better understand as the top priority, while Millennials (17%) are nearly twice as likely as Baby Boomers (9%) to point to more organic food and product options as the most important change brands and retailers could make.
 
This online survey of 1,023 nationally representative U.S. adults, ages 18+, was conducted by Wakefield Research in December 2017.
 

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Salesforce Builds Largest High-rise Water Recycling System in U.S.

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Global Customer Relationship Management (CRM) company, Salesforce, has opened Salesforce Tower in San Francisco – featuring the largest on-site water recycling system in a commercial high-rise building in the United States. 

In Salesforce Tower, wastewater from sources such as rooftop rainwater collection, cooling towers, showers, sinks, toilets and urinals will be collected, treated in a centralized treatment center and recirculated through a separate pipe system to serve non-potable uses in the building. The system will reduce drinking water demand by saving up to 30,000 gallons of fresh water a day, 7.8 million gallons a year, equivalent to the annual water consumption of 16,000 San Franciscoresidents.

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In collaboration with the City of San Francisco and Boston Properties, the blackwater system will be installed in the new building making it the first partnership in the U.S. between a city government, building owner and a tenant to support blackwater reuse in a commercial high-rise building. The system will provide water recycling for all tenants and offers a blueprint for how other companies looking to make a positive impact in the world can harness sustainable innovation.

The water recycling system is the latest example of the company’s commitment to the environment through green building practices. Salesforce has already achieved (or is pursuing) green building certification in 64% of its global office spaces and LEED Platinum certification – the highest possible achievement – for three buildings in its San Francisco headquarters.

“At Salesforce, real estate is more than architecture and design,” said Elizabeth Pinkham, the executive vice president of  global real estate at Salesforce. “It’s about creating a ‘home’ that has a positive impact on all of our key stakeholders, including employees, partners, customers, communities and the environment. Because our offices are a physical expression of our values, we’re committed to integrating green building practices into our real estate strategy, including office design, construction and operations.”

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Soup, Beer & Soap From Food Waste? Dutch Shoppers Say Yes

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“We sold about 700 items in one week. It’s double what we sell for organic products”

First it was a supermarket aisle free of plastics, now the Netherlands has notched up another novel solution in its fight against waste and pollution – products made with food that otherwise would be chucked in the bin.

Soups and chutneys made from wonky vegetables, beer from stale bread, cider from blemished apples and soaps from discarded orange peels are selling fast in the Wageningen branch of Jumbo, one of the biggest Dutch supermarket chains.

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First-week sales have surpassed expectations, said George Verberne, an entrepreneur who runs the branch, about 90 km (56 miles) north of the capital, Amsterdam.

“We sold about 700 items in one week. It’s double what we sell for organic products,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a phone interview.

“I’m proud and very happy we’re the first to do it.”

Verberne and 18 Dutch companies launched the Verspilling is Verrukkelijk or “Waste is Delicious” initiative last week, supported by a local university as part of a new national programme, United Against Food Waste.

The government is aiming to halve the amount of food thrown away by its 17 million people to become the first country in Europe to meet this global development goal by 2030.

Globally, one third of all food produced, worth nearly $1 trillion, is thrown away every year, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Critics say this is not only unethical in a world where hunger levels are rising but also environmentally destructive.

The Dutch organic chain Ekoplaza set up in February what it said was the world’s first plastics-free supermarket aisle, which has led to calls for others to follow suit.

TOO BIG, TOO CROOKED

The idea of selling food whose appearance does not meet supermarket standards was born when Verberne saw a presentation on food waste by Toine Timmermans of Wageningen University & Research, and offered to help.

Timmermans, who has worked on sustainable food issues for 15 years, asked for shelf space to showcase products made from waste and see how consumers responded.

At least 200 entrepreneurs across Europe offer products using surplus food, but they tend to be small and have limited impact, he said in a phone interview.

“If you want to solve food waste and achieve sustainable food systems, you need to work with people who have access to the market, like retail stores,” he said.

Researchers from the university will monitor sales over the next six months to learn how best to expand the products.

Chantal Engelen, co-founder of soup-making Kromkommer, one of 18 companies participating in “Waste is Delicious”, said about 30 percent of carrots get rejected because they have two legs, are too big or too crooked.

“We buy them straight from the grower for a fair price and turn them into healthy food,” she said, adding that their ultimate aim is to change consumer behaviour so that the reject carrots are sold in shops and Kromkommer’s work become obsolete.

The Netherlands is a small nation but it is one of the world’s largest agricultural exporters.

“Waste is Delicious” said it plans to expand to three more supermarkets in the next few months.

Timmermans is glad to see that higher pricing than established brands has not deterred customers.

“We cannot sell for less, because for the social innovators, this is their source of income,” he said.

“So working together and the message, ‘by buying this, you’re contributing to a better world’ is a very important one.”

Verberne believes wonky vegetables have a bright future.

“A lot of colleagues called me and sent me emails asking, “how does it work? Can I also do something like this?’,” he said. “I think we have to do this. This planet deserves it.”

By Thin Lei Win @thinink, Editing by Katy Migiro.

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Doing Something “Like a Girl” Should Mean “Amazing”

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You run like a girl” or “you throw like a girl” are common insults we’ve all heard or said at one point. The #LikeAGirl campaign aims to change the negative perception of the phrase and make “like a girl” a declaration that means downright amazing. 

Feminine care company, Always, launched the global campaign to help girls as they enter a formative and sensitive time of their lives – puberty. A survey by Research Now found the start of puberty and their first period mark the lowest moments in confidence for girls. Harmful words can add to that drop in confidence. 

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Always has been empowering girls through puberty education for over 30 years and reach between 17 and 20 million girls globally every year. With this campaign, they wanted to champion girls’ confidence by taking a stand and turn “Like a Girl” into a phrase that represents the strength, talent, character and downright amazingness of every girl. They also want to encourage conversation to help rethink and redefine the common words and phrases used in society that imply girls are weak or inferior. Many use these phrases unthinkingly and don’t realize the impact these words can have on a girls confidence, particularly at one of her most impressionable times of her life.

To further help shed light on the issue, and to inspire girls to keep doing things #LikeAGirl, Always partnered with three women in male-dominated fields in Lebanon in November 2017: graffiti artist Lynn Acra, calisthenics gymnast Eva-Maria Mahfouz and programmer Rayan Al Zahab, to encourage Lebanese girls to follow their dreams. The new #LikeAGirl video brings a fresh approach to the campaign, following the three girls through a day in their lives.

From sketching and prepping for a graffiti project, to daily strength trainings, coding and more, the girls are seen in real-life situations that capture how intense but rewarding their chosen professions and hobbies are.

“Some guys just looked at me and laughed. They said: You’re a girl, you can’t do it. But now I just feel like I’m laughing at them because I can do it,” said Acra.

“I’m touched by our #LikeAGirl campaign, because every girl is capable of greatness and we must continue to empower them to grow into strong, amazing women tomorrow,” says Edgar Sandoval, Vice President of Global Feminine Care at Procter & Gamble – who is a father of three young girls himself.

Some Key Findings of the “Always Puberty & Confidence Study”: 

CONFIDENCE

  • More than half of girls (about 1 out of 2 or 56%) claimed to experience a drop in confidence at puberty.
  • Lowest confidence moments for girls were when puberty started and when they got their first period; a close second were starting middle and junior high school.
  • Hispanic females cited the largest drop in confidence at puberty (60%), while fewer African American girls (50%) claimed to have a drop in confidence than Hispanic or Caucasian girls.
  • Girls who saw a drop in confidence during puberty are more likely to claim they started puberty either before or after their friends.
  • The advice most females would give to their younger selves is “you’re not alone” and “you’re not as awkward as you feel.”

LIKE A GIRL

  • The majority (89%) of females aged 16-24 agree that words can be harmful, especially to girls.
  • Only 19% of girls have a positive association toward the phrase “like a girl.”
  • More than half (57%) of females think there should be a movement to change the negative perception of the phrase “like a girl.”

The study was conducted using the Research Now Panel that surveyed 1,300 American Females aged 16 to 24 years old. There was a nationally representative sample group of 1,000 females as well as an additional boost of 150 African American and 150 Hispanic American females. 

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Woman Beats Brain Tumor, Rows Across The Atlantic

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Briton, Kiko Matthews, 36, arrived in Port St.Charles, Barbados on 22 March, smashing the World Record as the fastest woman to complete a solo trans-Atlantic row. This, despite have had two brain tumours removed – the last, just 8 months ago.

Kiko, finished the 3,000-mile journey, from Gran Canaria, single-handed and un-supported in 50 days, breaking the previous record of 56 days.

In completing the challenge, Kiko has so far raised over £70,000, of her target of £100,000, for King’s College Hospital Intensive Care Unit who twice removed a brain tumour from her. In 2009, Kiko, was diagnosed with Cushing’s disease, a rare condition that made walking up stairs impossible. The tumour on her pituitary gland caused severe memory loss, psychosis, diabetes, osteoporosis, insomnia and muscle wastage. The second was removed in August 2017 whilst she was in training for the Atlantic crossing.

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Having only learnt to row last year, Kiko, born and raised in Herefordshire, has rowed the Atlantic alone in 21-foot long Soma of Essex for up to 16 hours a day for seven weeks, slept in two hour shifts, dealt with 70-foot waves, sharks, hand and feet blisters and the least prevailing winds. She has been her own doctor, mechanic, skipper, friend and worst enemy in one of the toughest physical and mental challenges known to man. Only six women have previously completed the journey solo.

Kiko says, “The thought that eight months ago I was lying in hospital having my brain operated on and now I am here having rowed the Atlantic, I guess I am a bit proud. I have shown that anyone can attempt anything given the right attitude, belief, and support. I want to use my story to inspire women to challenge themselves.”

“I didn’t get scared by the adverse conditions, I just got on with things. What can you do about it? You have no choice but to carry on, like in life. It was temporary relentlessness. If I did ever get down, I thought of the people willing me on, I wanted to do it for them. The stories they sent me supported me incredibly. By the last two weeks, I was just totally content and at peace; I didn’t even listen to music,” she says.

On land, she has been virtually powered by a team of women, through her 100TogetHER initiative. The collaboration of women from all walks of life, have come together to support Kiko financially and with skills highlighting what can be achieved through community, challenge and collaboration and it’s their names which adorn the boat. Part of 100TogetHER is Britain’s most successful female Olympian, Katherine Grainger and Tracy Edwards – who skippered the first all-female crew in the Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race. She was also coached by Guin Batten, the 2000 Olympics silver medalist.

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How Soup Is Uniting and Transforming Communities

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When last did you fund a new venture over a bowl of soup? Well now you can.

Detroit Soup invites community members to pay $5 at the door and then listen to presenters vying for votes on a project that will make a positive difference in their communities. Projects range from art, urban agriculture, social justice, education and technology. Budding entrepreneurs have four minutes each to pitch an idea to diners and then take questions. Your $5 buys you a bowl of soup, salad, bread and a vote, and once the votes are counted, the winning presenter receives all the money collected at the door.

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“It’s like Shark Tank, but minus the a-holes,” says Amy Kaherl, the founder of the Soup fundraising idea, that has already spread to more than 100 cities around the world. “We’re not a slick TV show and don’t use presentation material,” she adds. “My view is that a big screen highlights disparity, and furthermore I couldn’t be bothered with what version of Windows you have or why your specific model laptop won’t link to a projector. I want to create a personal experience, eye to eye, that focuses more on the individual and the idea.”

151 Soup dinners later, and after raising more than $160,000 for various projects, Kaherl can pull together a dinner for 300 people in under 90 minutes. Beyond the distinct sense of community ownership (and the cheap entry ticket), much of the success of Soup can be attributed to mainstream media outlets that have highlighted Kaherl’s simple idea and fired the imagination of communities that can see how simple change can be. They may even get to hear a neighbor pitch they’ve never met, or become aware of an issue they didn’t know existed.

The term “social innovation” or “social enterprise” is sometimes tagged onto the project, but Kaherl is unfazed by terminology and would rather focus on the mysterious energy that exists when people come together for a ritualistic meal – which somehow opens minds and pockets to new ideas. Millennials wearing T-shirts emblazoned with “Detroit Hustles Harder,” rub shoulders with pensioners. Black and white, rich and poor, and ages 8 to 88 all eat the same meal with a common purpose of doing good.

“People get their power back. Diners – ordinary suburban folk – assume the role of investors and presenters have easy access to an audience that knows they’ll ultimately be the beneficiaries of the winning idea.” Diners who’ve brought food to share, get 60 seconds to announce what they’re working on, or ask advice. “Our events are like human bulletin boards,” Kaherl laughs.

Kaherl has done away with the institutional gatekeepers of traditional fundraising and has helped fund 57 projects, 48 nonprofits and 27 for-profit enterprises. Thirty-three projects would not have existed if it weren’t for the Soup initiative. It’s amazing how far $5 can go. “Some people will spend $1,000 on bags and clothing without even thinking. I’ve shown how a fraction of that can change lives. There is so much in society trying to push us apart right now, Soup proves that we all have more in common,” explains Kaherl.

Since 2010, more than 1,000 ideas have been presented over a bowl of soup to 25,000 diners and two marriages have even come about. It’s a simple idea with complex outcomes. You’ll find plenty of other good restaurants in a Soup host city, but nothing quite as profound. 

www.detroitsoup.com

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Changing Communities, One Healthy Meal at a Time

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Getting diagnosed with type 2 diabetes made Chad Cherry abruptly rethink his relationship with food. He took the increased risks of blindness, kidney failure, heart disease and stroke so seriously that he decided to become a chef, to learn how to combat the poor diet he’d become accustomed to.

Amazingly, the hospital that treated him failed to mention poor diet as a contributing factor to his illness. Our health systems are designed to medicate once symptoms appear, not educate people on their lifestyle choices – that may lead to illness, or even death.

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Cherry researched his condition online and connected the dots between what he was eating and his diabetes. He turned to organic ingredients and cut highly processed foods from his diet and within a few months started seeing and feeling the difference. When he met his wife Karen, she complained of severe abdominal pains each time she ate but was fine after eating Chad’s newly discovered food. “I said, ‘I’ll feed you every day!’” recalls Cherry with a laugh, and so they married and embarked on a healthy eating adventure that culminated in their company, Refresh Live. The couple call themselves farm-to-table consultants and have already racked up celebrity clients, including personal chef to the Kardashians, Olympic swimmer Dara Torres, rapper Ace Hood and has also fed Barack and Michelle Obama.

Their goal is to refresh people’s relationship, knowledge and experience of food with healthier, locally-grown produce. Standing in the center of any major American city you’d assume that food is never far from reach. Fast food culture has placed a McDonalds, Burger King, Dunkin’ Donuts or Taco Bell on almost every city block. While convenient for a quick meal, it’s given rise to “food deserts” – areas with limited access to fresh and nutritious food. They occur especially in areas with low-income and minority residents, and the processed, sugary and fat-laden foods are known contributors to the country’s obesity epidemic. As part of their program, Chad and Karen include awareness on fast food brands that groom people from an early age to crave it.

Food deserts that stretch for five miles in every direction, lack of mobility and financial constraints can result in someone eating whatever they find at the overpriced, corner store – that only stocks highly processed food. Slick marketing will have you believe that eating fresh, healthy food is based on just changing your behavior, but in reality, many people are victims of socio-economic circumstances and don’t have a choice. Even with better food options around, Chad reckons the country still has a long way to go. “What we label ‘organic’ in America is still lower quality than what Europeans consider regular grade – everyday food found in unhyped-up food stores across Europe. 

“When communities say ‘we have issues’ they never get specific,” says Karen. “Food is one such issue. Our diets have been constructed by lobby groups and industries, and it’s time to claim our health back. No one’s coming to save your health; you need to do it yourself.” 

www.refreshliveinc.com

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Flower Power Helps Heal The Violence in Baltimore

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“I’m an urban change warrior,” says Walker Marsh of Baltimore, who uses vacant lots in the inner city to grow high-quality flowers, herbs and vegetables. The tall, soft-spoken urban farmer is sitting on the floor, gluing sunflower petals to a discarded stop sign with childlike wonder.

Baltimore is not known for its softness, and you can’t help wondering how someone such as Marsh succeeds in a city that has seen gun crime, rape, robbery and murder spike many times the national average. In 2015, the death of Freddie Gray in police custody touched off riots and a crime wave that caused the highest per capita death rate ever recorded in the city’s history.

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In tough, crime-ridden communities, you usually have two choices: become like them or submit to them. No one expects you to start growing flowers.

When Marsh couldn’t find a job, he decided to create his own. Tha Flower Factory now trains young horticulturalists who are recruited from the juvenile justice system and together they are changing East Baltimore – one flowerbed at a time. Brightly colored patches of flowers stand out starkly against the dull, faded inside walls of buildings that were demolished years ago and never rebuilt. Empty lots in cities become magnets for the homeless, drug dealers and dumping grounds for waste, but Marsh has transformed them into green lungs and living symbols of growth and renewal in places of despair. The flowers get sold to local stores, restaurants and businesses.

In poor neighborhoods, a bunch of flowers is seen as an extravagant luxury, yet Marsh has seen this narrative change and now gets enormous support from total strangers. “If people grow up in a beautiful environment, they become beautiful,” he says. He’s had tools donated and people honking their horns in support as they drive by. “Vacant lots serve as shortcuts for pedestrians, and many people stopped when they filled with flowers. I think they thought it had become private property, but now they know we want them to walk through and smell the flowers,” he laughs.

Another positive spin-off is that sunflowers draw lead and arsenic from the soil in a process called phytoremediation. It’s not widely known that sunflowers were planted around Chernobyl to remove some of the radioactive isotopes released by the nuclear meltdown. Vacant lots in cities are notorious for being polluted with toxins from old housing stock and paint, and Tha Flower Factory is helping clean the environment and make it less toxic for inhabitants.

Taking a break from his sunflower petal design, Marsh looks up and considers what a real leader might be. “Leadership should foster a feeling of togetherness,” he frowns. “When I work with the 14-year-olds in the flower gardens, I get much better results when I approach them as a peer, not as a ‘leader.’ There’s an old African proverb, ‘I am what I am because of you,’ and that resonates deeply with me.”

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T-shirts To Make You Eat Your Words

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The next time you say something offensive in public, beware – Amanda Brinkman may put it on a T-shirt. German-born Brinkman moved with her family to Los Angeles as a child and has always looked for attention.

During the 2016 presidential debates, she found it. After hearing Donald Trump call Hillary Clinton a “nasty woman,” she bristled, and on a whim mocked up a T-shirt with the phrase emblazoned on the front and put it up on her new website.

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She woke up the next morning to 10,000 orders and called the online payments company to report an error. It wasn’t, and Brinkman found herself thrown into the midst of a new business venture that started by appropriating someone else’s words. Can attitude alone make you money? Well, yes, it seems so. Since October 2016, Brinkman’s online shop, Google Ghost, has donated a percentage of sales to Planned Parenthood – more than $130,000. Celebrities such as Will Ferrell and Katie Perry have been seen sporting her playful T-shirts, with messages such as, “The Future is Female” and “Gender is a Drag.”

“I want my movement, Shrill Society, to make people, especially women, laugh, think, and hopefully become more socially active through product design and collaborations,” she explains. “Shrill Society is a play on the word ‘shrill,’ which has been historically used to rob women of power. We intend to give it back.”

Brinkman’s fun and irreverent style has rubbed off on other women since she was young. She bounced into her classroom on the first day of school, a newly arrived immigrant wearing lace gloves, bright colors and mismatched, patterned clothing and was met with a sea of beige outfits from stunned classmates. Her teacher made her wipe the bright red lipstick off that day, but she noticed how girls in her class became braver over the next few months and more experimental in what they wore. Some of them formed a girls-only bicycle gang and roamed the streets looking for adventure. The crazy forest girl from Germany had turned school into a lesson on empowerment.

Brinkman’s T-shirt may have started off viral, but it’s more than just sloganeering. Their products are created in ethical working conditions that reinforce their politics – to make the world a safer place for women and girls. That means no sweatshops, domestic production, and recyclable shipping materials.

“Because our individual stories matter,” she explains. “We connect you with our artists and makers and to women making a difference all over the world. We use humor to provide context, enable conversation and build relationships. We don’t believe in shaming one another for where we are on our respective political journeys. Instead, we offer tools to empower each other to find our voices, make our choices, and follow our passions.” Brinkman’s goal is to create ongoing products that expand upon women’s significant contributions to a shared history and to shape how young women tell their stories. She also wants you to stay nasty. 

www.googleghost.com

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Building Bikes For Social Mobility

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Bicycles are a manifestation of what John Dengler has been trying to do with the homeless of Tampa, Florida for years. The city suffers from the second-highest rate of homelessness after Los Angeles, mainly due to temperate winters that allow those on the streets to survive year-round.

“In our society, if people don’t have monetary value, they don’t have value,” says Dengler, who was on a mission to find gainful employment for those who sometimes found a part-time job across town, but still needed a way of getting across a city of 2,500 square miles.

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As Dengler traveled around Tampa, he began noticing something strange. Thousands of abandoned bicycles – in police impounds, chained to city buses, around colleges, condos and apartment blocks. “Literally hundreds of thousands,” he says. “You couldn’t collect them all if you tried; just another example of our wasteful society.”

Seeing homeless people the city didn’t seem to value, and bikes that no one cared for, Dengler decided to put them together to create something new – Well Built Bikes. The organization teaches people on the streets how to build and recondition bicycles to sell at a fraction of a new one. Early challenges included by-laws preventing the homeless from gathering for too long in one place, complaints from neighbors wanting to keep undesirable elements away from gentrified suburbs and frequent run-ins with the law, that once saw Dengler getting beaten up.

The barrier to entry is low: a bag of cheap hand tools and parts that are easily sourced from discarded bikes. The organization prefers to bring in bikes that need some attention as it forces people to work. A sense of belonging and purpose has rippled through the Tampa homeless community. The Earn-a-Bike program earns a destitute person a free bike after putting in 10 hours of maintenance work at a Well Built repair shop.

“One part of our mission is to get homeless people to build their own bikes to use as personal transport; it transforms lives,” says Dengler. “It’s become a game-changer for those seeking work. When you own reliable transport you suddenly have access to job opportunities across the city, no longer constrained by the distance you can walk.” One guy enjoyed his newfound freedom so much he even cycled across the state to visit his son in prison, a distance of a few hundred miles!

You’d think local bike shops would feel threatened by thousands of cheap bikes flooding the market, but Dengler notes that the cheapest bike in a commercial bike shop is still way more than their most expensive bike and doesn’t pose any threat. “We operate somewhere between a bike shop and a pawn shop,” he muses.

There’s a common attitude that views for-profit ventures differently to charities. For some reason, people feel they must stop giving when a venture turns from non-profit to profit. This misguided way of thinking must change, according to Dengler. “Putting food or money into someone’s hands is good, but how about exploring a more lasting solution. Buying a sandwich for a homeless guy is great, but he’ll be hungry again in four hours and has to wait for you to reappear. There’s an unhealthy relationship between rich and poor in the world, yet I think they actually need each other desperately. Poor people have a unique vantage point on how these systems work and rich people have stuff poor people can use. Look at Well Built Bikes – we started a business from rich people’s junk.”

The sense of pride, belonging and purpose felt by those involved in Well Built Bikes can best be illustrated by a story Dengler recently heard. A homeless guy involved in the program came across a middle-class girl on an expensive bike that had broken down. He took out his bike tools and had her back on the road in minutes. It must have been the last thing she expected and helped in some small way to bridge the divide between the haves and the have nots.

Dengler is on a mission to get these two worlds to talk. He believes this is how innovation will emerge and the healing process between disparate communities will begin. “Watching the homeless standing proudly with their bikes, saying ‘I built this, I rode here,’ is incredibly empowering. People become alive again. This potential has always been inside; they just needed someone to believe in them.” 

www.bikeshoptampa.com

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