THUNDER BAY - Grade 7 and 8 students at Westmount Public School had a hands on lesson on how to be global citizens.
Students in the global citizenship academy at Westmount have partnered with a Grade 11 and 12 transportation technology class at Westgate Collegiate and Vocational Institute to send working bicycles to Africa.
The Westmount students have been working with their high school counterparts in the Bicycles for Humanity program at Westgate to repair, restore, and clean bicycles for donation.
Lisa Dampier, global citizenship academy teacher at Westmount, said the class teaches students about global cultures and issues affecting other people around the world.
The Bicycles for Humanity program at the neighbourhood high school was a perfect fit for the program, according to Dampier, because it provides the students with hands-on experience.
“They’ve been really excited,” Dampier said. “When we came back the first day that was all they could talk about for the rest of the day. It’s one of the first times that I heard parents say that their kids are coming home and talking about the things they are doing at school. They’ve been really excited, they couldn’t wait to come back today.”
The Bicycles for Humanity program donated more than 50 bikes to Africa in its last shipment and more than 75 students from Westmount and Westgate worked on 20 bikes Thursday morning.
The students are responsible for all the components on the bike and making sure they work properly, from chains and gears, to brakes and tires.
Dampier said that the students seem to enjoy the program so much because it is helping prepare them for entering high school, which for some, is just around the corner.
“I think it’s being involved in the high school and knowing that they are going to be here in a year or two,” she said. “It’s getting them more comfortable and getting excited to know some of these big kids and making them feel like they already have friends over here now and that this is a program that is going to be available to them next year. There are so many components that have them excited.”
For grade eight student, Matthew Tenniscoe, the program has been a lot of fun and the more challenging the repairs, the more fun it has been.
“I’ve learned a lot more hands on stuff,” he said. “At school, before the academies, we would just use pencils and papers and imagine what it’s like working on bikes. But now we are actually here working on these bikes. It feels great to give a bike to somebody in Africa that needs a bike.”
Daniel Richard, a grade 12 student at Westgate, said he wishes he had a program like the one at Westmount before coming to high school.
“It would be very beneficial and would boost my variety of skills and open more doors so I would be able to do more things,” he said.
Richard said he is happy to be helping the students from Westmount as they prepare the bikes for shipping to Africa.
“You give your own experiences to the kids and show them what to do and help them with things they don’t know and help them learn new things,” he said. “They’re really open and want to do new things and try new things. They’re not shy.”
The program will continue throughout the year, with a new group of students participating in the new year.
Dampier said the hands-on experience of working on the bikes provides many different lessons for the students in her class, but the most important lesson has certainly not been lost of the young minds.
“They say to me that they feel like what they are doing at school really matters, we know it’s making a difference,” she said. “They look at the fact that these bikes are not just going to kids to play around like they would use them, they are going to a doctor who has no way to get to the hospital he works at five miles and normally walks every day. They understand the importance of what these bikes represent to someone around the world.”
